FOLLOWING the letters and articles in last week's Wiltshire Times, I wanted to clarify some issues around the Scores on Doors scheme for food hygiene standards.

While West Wiltshire is the first council locally to introduce Scores on Doors, over 60 authorities nationally have either started or are about to launch similar processes. The other Wiltshire councils hope to be on line by the middle of 2007.

In common with all food safety inspection teams, we use a scoring system set down by the government, and this has been in use for more than 10 years. In addition, the public has always been able to request the outcomes of our inspections.

Scores on Doors provides a visual display of these results using a star system, making it easier for people to understand. It does not involve any change to our inspection regime, or judge premises any differently to the past. As such, the costs of launching this have been minimal, as we have merely developed existing information.

We have had over 800 hits on our website in just the first week or so, indicating that there is a real enthusiasm amongst the public for this type of information. This is backed up by your own web poll, which showed 92 per cent of respondents in favour of the scheme.

One of your correspondents criticised the fact that the first set of published ratings totalled less than 30 premises. Scores on Doors relates only to businesses that sell food directly to the public for consumption. Our food safety team has a wide range of other duties in addition to these inspections, including sampling water supplies, investigating complaints, and inspecting food manufacturers, which is a huge task in this district.

For guidance, the system goes from zero to five stars. A two-star rating is considered satisfactory and three stars good, with four and five stars reserved for very good and excellent standards of hygiene, usually in excess of legal requirements.

At present, ratings for 50 businesses show on the system. All bar four have two stars or more. This shows that the vast majority of businesses do maintain satisfactory food hygiene standards, regardless of their size or staffing levels.

Finally, I would point out that the council would much rather celebrate success than highlight failings, which is why we focused on the district's two five-star premises when we launched Scores on Doors.

CLLR ROSEMARY BROWN (Lib Dem) Environment portfolio holder WWDC