Food Hygiene Rating Scheme
East Staffordshire Borough Council will switch to a new way of displaying the hygiene standards of food businesses to consumers. The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) will be adopted by the Borough from 1st April 2012 and will run alongside the current Rate my Place scheme.
The ‘Food Hygiene Rating Scheme’ is a national local authority/Food Standards Agency partnership initiative. The scheme provides consumers with information about hygiene standards in food premises at the time they are inspected by local authority food safety officers to check compliance with legal requirements – the food hygiene rating given reflects the inspection findings. The purpose is to allow consumers to make informed choices about the places where they eat out or shop for food thereby encouraging businesses to improve their hygiene standards.
What types of businesses will be given a rating?
Restaurants, takeaways, cafés, sandwich shops, pubs, hotels, supermarkets and other retail food outlets, and any other business where consumers can eat or buy food will be given a rating. However the following exemptions and exclusions apply:
- Exempt premises - 'low-risk' premises which are not generally recognised by consumers as being food businesses, and/or certain businesses operating from private addresses – e.g. childminders.
- Excluded premises - Establishments that do not provide food to final consumer are not included in the FHRS. These include manufacturers and packers, primary producers, importers and exporters, distributors and transporters.
Under certain circumstances, exempted businesses can request to opt in to the scheme; however business that are excluded from the scheme cannot currently opt in.
How will ratings be calculated and how does this differ from now?
Similarly to the Rate my Place scheme a business will be given scores for three areas. The scores are then converted to a food hygiene rating using the following table. The lower the score, the better you are meeting legal requirements. The three scores are then added together to give a total score within the range of 0 to 80.
| How hygienically the food is handled |
0 |
5 |
10 |
15 |
20 |
25 |
| Condition of structure |
0 |
5 |
10 |
15 |
20 |
25 |
| How you manage and document food safety |
0 |
5 |
10 |
20 |
30 |
| Total score |
0 |
80 |
| Level of compliance |
High |
Low |
The numerical scores are then converted into your food hygiene rating. There are six different food hygiene ratings ranging from ‘0’ at the bottom which means that urgent improvement is necessary up to ‘5’ at the top which means that hygiene standards are ‘very good’.
Under the current rate my place scheme the rating you get depends on the total score you get as shown below:
| Rating |
5 (top) |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
0 (bottom) |
Under the new scheme the rating you will be given also depends on the total score but because you may do better in some areas and less well in others, it also reflects the score for the criteria where your performance was poorest.
The table below shows how the numerical scores are converted into ‘ratings’ in the new scheme. For example, if you score 5 for how hygienically the food is handled, a score of 5 for the condition of the structure of your premises and a score of 10 for how you manage and document food safety, your scores will add up to 20 and your poorest score is 10. Using this table, you can see that this would give a hygiene rating of ‘4 ‘ – this is the second top rating and means that your hygiene standards are ‘good’.
| Additional scoring factor |
No score > 5 |
No score > 10 |
No score > 10 |
No score > 15 |
No score > 20 |
- |
| Rating |
5 (top) |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
0 (bottom) |
| Hygiene standards |
Very good |
Good |
Generally satisfactory |
Improvement necessary |
Major improvement necessary |
Urgent improvement necessary |
When will the switch be made to the national scheme?
We are in the process of contacting all businesses to inform them of the changes and to ensure that
the details we hold about your business are accurate and up-to-date. This is important as some of the details will be published, together with your food hygiene rating, at http://www.food.gov.uk/ratings and http://www.ratemyplace.org.uk
If any of the name or address information on the envelope in which this newsletter arrived is incorrect please advise us immediately. This will ensure that you receive all the future information you require from us.
Will my current Rate My Place rating change?
With the changeover to the new banding scheme your current rating may change. You will be informed of your new score and rating at least 3 weeks in advance of the date when the switch will be made. At that point we will issue you with a new FHRS certificate, FHRS sticker and Rate my Place sticker showing your rating under the new scheme.
On the day of the switch, we would like you to remove your existing certificate and display your new certificate and sticker in places where your customers can easily see them – the sticker should go in the window or on the door. Your rating will then be published on the new national website at www.food.gov.uk/ratings and the rating along with the inspection report will be displayed on www.ratemyplace.org.uk
What safeguards are there to ensure ratings are fair?
You will be notified of your rating in writing within 14 days of the inspection. If you are a multi-site businesses, the head office will be notified also. Along with notification of your rating, we will explain the reasons why your business was rated as it was, and give details of any actions that you need to take to improve your level of legal compliance.
In order to ensure that the scheme is fair to businesses, it has been designed to include a number of safeguards. These are: an appeal procedure; a ‘right to reply’; and an opportunity to request a re-visit when improvements have been made in order to be re-assessed for a ‘new’ rating. Information for food businesses about these different safeguards is provided below.
What is the purpose of the appeal process?
Following a hygiene inspection of your premises by a food safety officer from your local authority you will be told in writing - either at the time or within 14 days (this includes weekends and public holidays)-what your food hygiene rating is.
If you think that the rating is wrong or unfair – in other words it does not reflect the hygiene standards at the time of inspection – you can appeal against this.
What is the purpose of the ‘right to reply’?
This lets you explain to potential customers any actions that you have taken after your inspection to improve hygiene standards at your premises or to say if there were unusual circumstances at the time of the inspection that might have affected your food hygiene rating. It is not an opportunity to complain or criticise the food hygiene rating scheme or your food safety officer.
What is the purpose of requested re-visits?
You will automatically be given a new food hygiene rating each time your premises are inspected by your local authority - the frequency of these planned inspections depends on the risk to people’s health. The greater the risk, the more often you will be inspected. If you make the improvements to hygiene standards that the local authority food safety officer told you about at your last planned inspection you can ask for a re-visit before the next planned inspection so that the hygiene standards in your premises can be reassessed with a view to giving you a new and higher food hygiene rating.
The Food Standards Agency has produced guidance for businesses on how each of these safeguards works which is available at: http://www.eaststaffsbc.gov.uk/Services/FoodTeam/Pages/default.aspx