What happens during a food hygiene inspection

Who comes, and why

The person on the door is usually an environmental health officer, or another authorised food safety officer, employed by the local authority for that address. The Food Standards Agency sets the framework they work to in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including the Food Law Code of Practice and the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme. Food Standards Scotland and the local authority cover Scottish businesses, under the Food Hygiene Information Scheme. The officer is not a consultant you have booked. Routine inspections are planned by the council according to risk, and they are usually unannounced.

The legal backdrop is assimilated Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, which requires a permanent procedure based on HACCP principles, and the food hygiene regulations in each nation. For a small caterer, Safer Food, Better Business is the Food Standards Agency pack that turns that duty into safe methods and a diary. CookSafe is the equivalent many Scottish businesses use. The officer is there to see whether the system fits this kitchen and whether it is actually used on a normal trading day. How to get the pack into that shape before they arrive is the inspection preparation guide. This page is about the hours they are in the building.

Arrival

They arrive during opening hours, show identification, and tell you they are there to carry out a food hygiene inspection. An authorised officer is entitled to enter a food business. If you are unsure the identification is genuine, you can check it with the council while they wait. Asking a genuine officer to come back on a quieter day is not an option they have to accept. Being mid-service is normal. Keep cooking safely. Name one person who can talk and find records, and keep everyone else on the job they were doing. Handwashing, temperature control and separation of raw and ready-to-eat food do not pause so that the whole team can watch the folder being opened.

A small cafe or takeaway visit often lasts long enough to walk the premises, watch some work, and read the recent records. A larger kitchen, a care setting, or a site with several storage areas takes longer. You will not be given a minute-by-minute agenda. Tell them about anything that is genuinely urgent for safety, such as a unit you have already taken out of use, so they see the same kitchen the team is managing.

The walk around the food

Expect them to follow food through the building rather than to sit down with the diary first. Deliveries and the goods-in corner, dry stores, fridges and freezers, preparation benches, cooking, cooling, hot holding, service, wash-up, the hand basin, the toilet lobby, waste and the outside of the building are all in play. They open doors. They look under and behind equipment, at extractor filters, at the gap where pests would enter, and at whether the layout forces raw meat to travel across ready-to-eat food.

They use their own probe as well as looking at yours. A hot-hold reading, a fridge air temperature, or the centre of a cooked dish may be checked while you watch. If their reading and your last log line differ, explain the time and what has happened since. A salad well that was refilled ten minutes ago is a different fact from a well that has sat at 12°C all morning. The fridge log guide and the probe calibration guide are the records that make that explanation short.

Watching the team

A large part of the visit is ordinary work. Officers watch whether hands are washed at the basin, with hot water, soap and a way to dry them, or rinsed in the pot wash. They watch whether cloths and boards stay with the food they are allowed to touch. They watch whether a probe is wiped between raw food and food that will not be cooked again. They look at dates on opened packs, at food cooling on a side in deep trays, and at whether allergenic ingredients are identifiable to the person taking an order.

They will speak to staff, not only to the owner. "What would you do if this fridge was at 10°C?", "How do you cool the rice?", "Which cakes contain nuts?" are standard questions. The point is whether the safe method still works when the person who wrote it is not on the pass. A recitation of a paragraph nobody follows is weaker than a short answer that matches the tray in front of them. Training records matter here because they show who was shown the method. The training records guide covers what to keep.

The records conversation

After or during the walk they ask for the food safety system. For an SFBB kitchen that is the safe methods, completed for this menu, and the diary: opening and closing checks, extra checks, and the four-weekly review. They look at temperature logs, cleaning completion, probe checks, allergen information, pest-control reports, and training evidence. They are not scoring handwriting. They are asking whether the pages describe the room they have just walked through, and whether failed checks produced a decision.

Gaps on days you were open, a week written in one pen, and corrective actions that stop at the word "noted" are the patterns that damage confidence. A warm reading with a recheck, a food movement, and a named person is evidence the system caught the problem. Have the current pack where the team can reach it. A manager who has to phone head office for today's diary, while the cook cannot say where the probe sheet is, is already answering the management question. Multi-site businesses should read that alongside the guide to several sites.

What environmental health officers check

The list below is the practical content of a routine catering inspection. Not every visit covers every line in the same order. The officer follows the risk in front of them.

• Food handling: cooking, cooling, reheating, hot holding, chilling, and the separation of raw and ready-to-eat food.
• Personal hygiene: fitness to work, handwashing, protective clothing, and cuts covered.
• Structure and cleaning: the state of surfaces, equipment, lighting, ventilation, drainage, and the cleaning schedule that is actually followed.
• Pests: proofing, evidence of activity, and the reports from your contractor for this address.
• The food safety management system: SFBB or an equivalent, including safe methods, the diary, and the four-weekly review.
• Temperature evidence and the probe check that supports it.
• Allergen information the team can use for the food on sale today, including specials.
• Suppliers and traceability for the higher-risk foods you handle, and what you would do with an unsafe delivery.
• Whether staff who are not the manager can explain the controls they carry out.

Allergens sit under food information law, including the prepacked-for-direct-sale rules often called Natasha's Law, as well as in the conversation about how the kitchen is run. The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme score itself is the hygiene scheme. Officers still ask, because a business that cannot say what is in the soup has a management problem they can see. The detail is in the allergen rules guide.

What they can require

Most visits end with advice and a written report of what was found. Where the law is not being met, an officer can serve a hygiene improvement notice. That notice says what is wrong, what you must do, and the date by which you must do it. Read the dates. They are part of the notice, not a suggestion in the covering email.

If the officer believes there is an imminent risk to health, they can serve a hygiene emergency prohibition notice. That can stop a particular process or close the premises until the risk is removed. A notice of that kind has to be confirmed by a court. Officers can also detain or seize food they consider unsafe. In some nations they have further tools, such as remedial action notices, that can stop a process until it is put right. Photographs and samples are part of ordinary evidence gathering, not a sign that a prosecution has already been decided.

Formal enforcement is a legal process. If you receive a notice, follow the deadlines on the paper and take advice from the officer who served it or from a competent adviser before you guess at what "done" means. This guide describes a routine visit. It is not a substitute for advice on a live notice.

How the rating is decided

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme publishes a rating from 0 to 5. It is built from three scored areas: hygienic food handling; cleanliness and condition of the facilities and building; and confidence in management and control procedures. Lower intervention scores are better. The Food Standards Agency publishes the way local authorities turn those scores into the sticker. A weak score in one area can hold the published rating down even when the other two areas look sound. Confidence in management is where diaries, training, supervision and closed corrective actions sit. The habits that move a rating are in how to improve a food hygiene rating.

Scotland does not use the 0 to 5 sticker. The Food Hygiene Information Scheme uses outcomes such as Pass and Improvement Required. The visit still covers hygiene, structure and management. A business that trades in Scotland should not describe itself with an English-style "5".

You may be told the likely outcome on the day, or you may receive it in writing afterwards. The report of findings is the document to work from. The number on its own does not tell a cook which tray, which basin or which missing week to fix.

After they leave

Write down what was said while it is fresh, against your own notes of what the officer saw. Then wait for the report before you rebuild the system around a half-remembered comment. Fix physical hazards the same day when you can: soap at the basin, a unit taped off, food you agreed to throw away. Management fixes take a run of real days: checks completed by the person who did them, actions closed, a four-weekly review that mentions what changed.

The rating is published through the local authority to the Food Standards Agency ratings site. In Wales, display of the current rating sticker is a legal requirement under the Food Hygiene Rating (Wales) Act 2013. In Northern Ireland, display is a legal requirement under the Food Hygiene Rating Act (Northern Ireland) 2016. In England, display of the sticker is voluntary, and the rating is still published online. Take old stickers down when a new rating is issued so customers are not looking at a number you no longer hold.

Appeal, right to reply, and a new inspection

The Food Standards Agency sets out three safeguards for businesses in the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme. You can appeal if you think the rating does not reflect the standards at the inspection. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the appeal is in writing, within 21 days of being notified, and that period includes weekends and bank holidays. In Wales the appeal uses the standard form. Scotland's Food Hygiene Information Scheme has its own clock: an appeal is in writing within 14 days of notification.

You also have a right to reply. That is your comment on the inspection, published with the rating, for example to explain a particular circumstance or to say what you have since put right. The Food Standards Agency says there is no deadline, up until your next inspection produces a new rating. It is not an advertisement, and the authority can decline comments that are not suitable to publish.

If you accept the rating and you have completed the improvements the officer required, you can ask for a re-rating inspection rather than waiting for the next planned visit. The request is in writing. You cannot choose the day. The Food Standards Agency says the re-rating inspection will be carried out within three months of your written request. Local authorities in Wales and Northern Ireland charge a fee for that visit. Some authorities in England charge as well. Pay for a revisit when the failures in the report are actually fixed and you have records that show the new habit, not on the afternoon the sticker arrives. You can see the published rating for any registered business with the hygiene rating checker.

Worked example

A fish and chip shop that also sells a gluten-free battered fish on Fridays is inspected at 5:40pm, as the fryers come up. The officer shows identification. The owner stays on the fryer and asks the supervisor to walk round. The officer checks the raw-fish fridge against the morning log: the log says 4°C, the display says 5°C. The hot-hold cabinet for cooked fish is probed with the officer's thermometer and is above 63°C. A tray of mushy peas in a deep pan on the side is still hot in the centre. The supervisor says it was cooked at 4pm and "will go in the fridge before we shut". The officer asks how they know it will cool in time. The safe method says shallow trays and a target time. The pan does not match the method. They decant it while the officer is there and write the decision.

The probe sheet shows a check six weeks ago, inside the SFBB range, and nothing since a new probe was bought last week. The supervisor runs iced water and boiling water before the officer leaves the kitchen and writes the readings. The gluten-free batter is in an unlabelled tub beside the standard batter. That is corrected and the Friday allergen note is updated. The diary's four-weekly review is two weeks overdue. Nobody pretends it was signed. The visit does not close the shop. The report later marks handling and structure as broadly sound and confidence in management as the weak area: the cooling method was not the one in use, the new probe had not been checked, and the review was late. The owner fixes those three, keeps three weeks of complete records, and then asks the council about a re-rating visit. Arguing the number on the night, with the peas still in the deep pan, would not have changed the finding.

On the day itself

• Keep one person available, and keep the rest of the team on safe work.
• Show the records you actually use. Producing a second set written for inspections is obvious when it disagrees with the fridge.
• If something is wrong, say what you are doing about it. Do not fill blank days while the officer is in the office.
• Let staff answer the questions they are asked. Coaching them in a whisper makes the answer less credible.
• Note the points raised. The formal report is still the list you work through afterwards.

Where this comes from

The shape of the visit follows local-authority inspection under assimilated Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 and the food hygiene regulations, using the Food Standards Agency Food Law Code of Practice and the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Safeguards for businesses — the 21-day appeal, the right to reply, and the re-rating inspection — are described on the Food Standards Agency's own pages for the scheme. Scottish outcomes and appeal timings follow Food Standards Scotland and the Food Hygiene Information Scheme. Safer Food, Better Business is the pack many caterers use to show safe methods and a diary. Your officer's report is the document that applies to your premises.

Related pages

EHO inspection checklistHow to improve a food hygiene ratingFood safety inspection checklistHygiene rating checkerRole hubs

Sources

Last reviewed 22 October 2026. These links are the pages this guide was checked against. They are not an endorsement of Localyn, and they do not make a kitchen compliant.

• Food safety inspections and enforcement
• Food Hygiene Rating Scheme: guidance for businesses
• Food Standards Agency food hygiene ratings search

Template, tool and hub

• Food safety inspection checklist
• Food hygiene rating checker
• Restaurants