What a food hygiene rating actually means

The sticker in the window is one of the most recognised pieces of public data in the country and one of the least understood. People read it as a quality score. It is not one.

Three things are being scored

An inspector assesses hygienic food handling — how food is prepared, cooked, cooled and stored. Then the condition of the premises: cleanliness, layout, ventilation, pest control. Then management of food safety, which is the paperwork and the systems proving the business knows what it is doing when nobody is watching.

That third one surprises people. A kitchen can be visibly spotless and still score poorly because it cannot demonstrate any system behind the cleanliness. The score is about reliability as much as about appearance.

It is one day, not a running average

A rating describes an inspection. Inspections are scheduled by assessed risk, which means a low-risk sandwich shop might wait years between visits. The date published next to the rating is therefore doing a lot of work, and a three from four years ago tells you about a business that may have changed hands twice since.

Businesses can also request a re-inspection once they have fixed what was raised, so a low score genuinely can be stale. Read the number and the date together or do not read it at all.

Scotland is a different scheme

Scotland does not use the zero to five scale. It uses the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, which reports Pass or Improvement Required. These are different systems with different thresholds and they do not map onto each other.

We show each as what it is. Converting a Scottish Pass into a number would be inventing a figure, and a made-up score on a food safety page is worse than no score.

What our tool covers

Our food hygiene tool shows rated businesses within about a mile of a postcode, with each rating and the date of the inspection behind it. Across the areas we hold that is 12,447 rated premises.

Useful when you are new to an area and want to know what is around you. Less useful as a reason to avoid somewhere — a three with a recent date and a visible improvement is often a better bet than a five from 2021.

Check food hygiene ratings near a postcode →