With the amendment of the Liquor and Catering Act, the ventilation standard has been far below that of the World Health Organization since 1 July. Previously, the requirement was that the air in catering establishments must be refreshed once every ten minutes. Due to the amendment of the law, new requirements have been in force since 1 July: it states that the air only needs to be refreshed once an hour.
Much less strict
NRC wrote about the relaxation of the ventilation standard. Interest organization Koninklijke Horeca Nederland (KHN) has announced that it does not agree with the new, much less strict requirement.
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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.
“Reintroducing these requirements makes sense,” the ministry said. The government is now looking at how this can be arranged. “Because the requirements did not expire until 1 July, we can assume that the catering companies still comply with this,” the ministry said in a response.
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How can the cabinet reverse the relaxation? One option is to adjust the ventilation requirements in the Building Decree. Another option is to include the ventilation requirements for the catering industry in the corona law.
Smoking ban
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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