Cornwall Council and Warrens Bakery are in the running for an award

Cornwall Council and Warrens Bakery are in the running for an award, as detailed in a press release by Cornwall Council today. Good news for a St Just based but Cornwall wide company! This news item is based on the press release.

The retail estate of Warrens Bakery Ltd and Cornwall Council have been announced as finalists in this year’s national Primary Authority Awards.

The Awards are presented by the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) with the emphasis this year on making an impact and quality delivery. The BRDO is working towards a regulatory environment in which businesses have the confidence to invest and grow and citizens and communities are properly protected. They do this by operating Primary Authority to ensure consistent regulation, improving the professionalism of front-line regulators, and giving businesses a say in their regulation. Primary Authority has been brought in by Government to help businesses that work across local authority boundaries to get consistent advice to save them time, money and help them grow.

As well as raising awareness of the scheme’s benefits, the awards highlight innovative ideas and best practice to be shared throughout the regulatory community.

The Primary Authority national scheme is overseen by the BRDO and gives businesses operating across council boundaries (regardless of their size) the right to form a statutory partnership with a single local authority in relation to regulatory compliance, in the knowledge that the expert opinion given will be reliable across the whole of the UK. These partnerships can cover environmental health and trading standards legislation, or specific areas such as food safety.

Warrens Bakery entered into a Primary Authority agreement with Cornwall Council in October 2012.

Alex Martin, Director of Retail Operations at Warrens Bakery said: “Working with Cornwall Council has been a really positive process, which has allowed us to develop our procedures and policies with confidence.

The business felt unshackled. Fundamentally we had the basis of great food safety – but this process allowed us to add the important issue that were missing and to remove the arduous tasks that were unnecessary and limiting. We now have robust policies in place that are understood by all.  The focus is on identifying and rectifying issues and our managers can now spend the appropriate amount of time on this aspect of the business and have been freed up to grow and improve the business for our customers.

I can recommend this process to any food business – simple or complex. The support from the Primary Authority has been outstanding.”

Geoff Brown, Cornwall Council cabinet member for communities said: “I was delighted to hear the positive comments from Warrens who have said that support and advice from our team has greatly helped their business and estimated that our involvement had saved them in the region of £120K per year which has been redeployed to support customer service and sales growth. This is the exactly the type of business support that the Council supplies so well.”

Cornwall Council Head of Public Protection and Business Support, Allan Hampshire says: “I am delighted that the Primary Authority agreement between Cornwall Council and Warrens Bakery has been recognised as part of this national award scheme.  It is testament to the high level of expertise and knowledge of the Council’s public protection and business support team and the commitment of Warrens Bakery that we have been named as finalists. The Council is now offering a variety of other commercial products to help businesses for example, food safety direct for new food businesses and a check and send service for people submitting licence applications.”