What is Primary Authority?

Primary Authority: a guide for businesses

Primary Authority (PA) is a government-run scheme that helps protect your business from unnecessary legal challenges. It helps to ensure your business operating in the food sector is doing so safely and legally. The government recognised that enforcement and interpretation of legal regulations was sometimes variable in its approach and that many businesses operated outside their own local area, so in 2009 the government launched the Primary Authority scheme.

The vision for Primary Authority is to allow your business to ‘trade with confidence’ throughout England. Once you have Primary Authority advice signed off within a registered partnership, if you are following the assured advice issued by the PA and it covers the issue arising, your operating practices can’t be challenged by any other enforcement authority.

Primary Authority is a means for your business to receive assured and tailored advice on meeting regulations such as environmental health, trading standards or fire safety through a single point of contact. This ensures start-ups get it right at the outset and enables your business to invest with confidence in products, practices, and procedures, knowing that the resources they devote to compliance are well spent.

Why Join the BFFF Scheme Now?

Any BFFF member can benefit from advice, whether it is tailored to your business or sectoral advice put in place by BFFF. The OPSS has published a leaflet giving further information on the scheme pa-overview-2019. A series of unique BFFF schemes are available for Fire Safety, Health & Safety, Food Standards & Labelling, and Food Safety.