§ Lord Harrisonasked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they are taking to encourage local authorities to take a more co-ordinated approach to 24WA the inspection of tourism and hospitality businesses and to discourage tire officers, environmental healthofficers, trading standards officers and health and safety officers from using separate databases. [HL1363]
§ Lord McIntosh of HaringeyMy department, in partnership with the Local Government Association, the tourism industry's Best Practice Forum and other government departments and agencies, have been working on Fitness for Purpose for the past 18 months.
Fitness for Purpose promotes better inspection and regulation of tourist accommodation as a way of tackling poor safety and trading standards to ensure that minimum legal requirements are met. It is targeted at hotels (and the restaurants within them) guesthouses, pubs with accommodation and bed-and-breakfast establishments that are failing to meet minimum legal requirements, in order to help them to improve. It aims to take a lighter regulatory enforcement touch to well-run businesses that are already complying with the necessary regulations.
Six local authorities piloted the scheme last year. These were: Blackpool, Bournemouth, LB Camden, Canterbury, LB Greenwich and West Sussex. Each pilot took a tailored approach to the needs of their area. All the authorities concentrated on better working between different parts of local authority enforcement activity and tourism officers and sharing of information. Canterbury's pilot resulted in the pooling of information held on eight different databases.
Richard Caborn, Minister for Sport and Tourism, expects to receive the final evaluation report of the pilots shortly and will be considering how best to take the project forward, based on these results.