Cabinet is looking at reintroducing old ventilation requirements for catering | Inland

On Thursday, experts expressed their surprise in the NRC newspaper about the decision to relax the ventilation requirement. Previously, this requirement entailed that the air in catering establishments must be refreshed once every ten minutes. Due to the amendment of the Licensing and Catering Act, the requirements from the Building Decree have been in force since 1 July: it states that the air only needs to be refreshed once an hour.

At the beginning of July, the House of Representatives hammered in a debate on the importance of ventilation in the fight against corona. Partly in response to this, the cabinet asked the Outbreak Management Team (OMT) for new advice. That team of experts now advises the cabinet to “revive” the ventilation requirements from before 1 July.

common sense

“The reintroduction of these requirements is logical, however, and the cabinet is now looking at it,” the ministry said. “Since the requirements did not expire until 1 July, we can assume that the catering companies still comply with this.”

One option is to adjust the ventilation requirements in the Building Decree. Another possibility is to include the ventilation requirements for the catering industry in the corona law, according to the ministry.

One of the reasons for the old, strict ventilation requirements was the fact that smoking used to be in the hospitality industry. The smoking ban in the catering industry raised questions about the importance of these strict requirements before the corona crisis.

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