Personal hygiene and handwashing

What you are being asked to do

The Food Standards Agency expects every person in a food-handling area to keep a high standard of personal cleanliness, to wear clean protective clothing, and to wash their hands so they do not pass bacteria to food. Safer Food, Better Business turns that into moments you can tick off on a shift: when you wash, how you wash, what you wear, and when you tell your manager you must not be at work. Your job is those habits, including on the days when the section is short-staffed.

Follow your own house rules if they are stricter than this page. Some kitchens ban nail varnish, false nails, watches, and all jewellery except a plain band. Some require a beard snood or a particular hat. The rule on the wall is the rule. Businesses in Scotland should follow CookSafe as well as the fitness-to-work rules in their pack. The 48-hour exclusion after sickness and diarrhoea is the same public-health standard across the UK. Do not shorten it because a rota looks thin.

Hands are also the main tool in the cross-contamination module. Washing them after raw meat is what stops Campylobacter and E. coli moving onto salad and cooked food. A surface still has to be cleaned as the cleaning module describes. This page is about you: your hands, your health, and what you are wearing while you work.

The moments that matter

Washing once at the start of the shift does not cover a kitchen. Bacteria and viruses get onto hands at particular moments, and those are the moments the wash has to happen. If you miss the moment, the gloves, the apron, and the "I washed an hour ago" do not repair it.

• Before you start work and when you come back from a break, a cigarette, or a delivery run.
• Before you handle ready-to-eat food, even if your hands look clean. Bread, salad, cooked meat, cake, ice and garnishes are the foods that will not get another cook.
• After touching raw meat, poultry, fish, eggs, unwashed vegetables, or their packaging. The packet is as dirty as the meat for this purpose.
• After using the toilet. This one is not optional and not "just if you think you need to". Norovirus and other bugs spread from people who feel almost well.
• After blowing your nose, sneezing, coughing, or touching your face, hair, ears or a plaster.
• After handling rubbish, cleaning chemicals, dirty equipment, or mopping. Clean hands, then food. Not food, then "I'll wash after this sandwich".
• After handling money, a card machine, your phone, or a door that the public use. Then wash again before food.
• After eating, drinking, or tasting. The spoon you tasted with does not go back in the pan.

If you are unsure whether a moment counted, wash. An extra wash costs a minute. A missed wash after the bin, or after raw chicken, is how a kitchen that "looks clean" still makes people ill. Supervisors should be able to stop a line and send someone to the basin without it being treated as an insult. That is the method working.

How to wash, not just that you did

Use the wash-hand basin. It is not the sink you wash food in, and it is not the pot wash. Wet your hands with warm water, add liquid soap, and rub for long enough to clean the whole surface — about twenty seconds of rubbing, not a pass under the tap. Palms, the backs of the hands, between the fingers, the thumbs, the fingertips and nails, and the wrists. Rinse the soap off. Soap left on is not a bonus. It can taint food, and it is not the same as a proper rub.

Dry with a disposable towel. Damp hands move bacteria almost as well as unwashed ones, and a shared cloth towel puts the next person's germs straight back on you. Use the towel to turn off a hand-operated tap, then throw the towel away. Elbow taps or sensor taps are there so clean hands do not grab the same lever raw hands just used. Do not defeat them by turning a sensor tap with your fingers and then wiping your hands on your apron.

The basin has to be usable at the moment you need it. That means warm water, soap in the dispenser, and towels in reach, all shift, not only at the start when someone refilled them. If the soap is empty or the water is cold and stays cold, tell the manager before you handle ready-to-eat food. Cold water and no soap is not a wash you can sign for. A basin full of soaking pans means the wash will not happen. Take the pans out. Inspectors treat a blocked wash-hand basin as evidence that handwashing is not really happening, whatever the training record says.

Sanitiser and gloves are not the wash

Antibacterial gel can be an extra step after a proper wash. It is not a replacement. Gel does not work well on hands that are greasy, floury, or visibly dirty, and it is a poor control for norovirus compared with soap and water. Do not use gel instead of washing after the toilet, after raw meat, or after the bin. If you cannot get to a basin, you are not ready to handle ready-to-eat food, even if a bottle of gel is in your pocket.

Gloves are a tool for a task, not a shield. They pick up bacteria exactly as skin does. If you wear them, wash your hands before you put them on, change them at every moment you would have washed, and wash again when you take them off. A torn glove is a foreign body as well as a hygiene failure. Change it, wash, and tell a manager if you think a piece is in the food. Blue gloves are often chosen because a fragment is easier to see in food. The colour does not make a dirty glove clean.

Do not wear the same pair of gloves from raw chicken to the salad. Do not wash gloves instead of changing them. Do not put gloves on over a dirty plaster or over hands you have not washed, and then handle bread. Latex and some other glove materials are also an allergen for some staff and some customers. If your kitchen uses a particular glove for that reason, use that one. The allergen question is the allergen module. The hygiene question is still the change of gloves.

What you wear, and what you leave off

Protective clothing means a clean apron or whites put on at work, not the shirt you travelled in. Outdoor clothes stay in the staff area, off the food bench. If your apron is splashed with raw meat juice, egg, or chemicals, change it before you handle ready-to-eat food. You do not wipe raw hands down the front and keep going. Spare aprons are part of the method. If there are none, tell the manager. Do not "make do" with a tea towel tucked in a waistband.

• Hair. Tie it back and wear the hat or net your kitchen requires. Loose hair is a physical contaminant and a complaint, and touching your hair means you wash your hands before you go back to food. Beards are covered if your house rule says so.
• Jewellery and watches. Leave watches, bracelets, and stoned rings off at prep. Stones and small parts fall into food. A plain wedding band is the usual exception, and only if your pack allows it. Follow the house rule if it allows nothing on the hands at all.
• Nails. Short and clean. False nails and nail varnish chip into food. If your kitchen bans them, the ban applies on a weekend shift as well as a training day.
• Perfume and strong sprays. They are not a bacterial control, and they can taint food. Keep them light or leave them off while you are in the food room.

You do not eat, drink, or chew gum over food or food surfaces. A drink, if your kitchen allows one, stays in a closed bottle away from the bench, and you wash your hands afterwards. Smoking and vaping happen only in the place the business has set aside, never in a food room, and you wash your hands before you come back to work. Tasting is done with a clean spoon, once. The spoon does not go back into the pot, and your fingers do not go into the sauce.

Cuts, skin and the bacteria you carry

A cut or a graze on a hand is covered with a brightly coloured waterproof plaster, usually blue, so it can be seen if it falls off. Then, for hand cuts, wear a glove. A fabric plaster that soaks through is not a cover. If the cut is infected — red, hot, weeping — you do not handle ready-to-eat food. Tell your manager. Staphylococcus aureus lives on skin and in noses and can be pushed into food from a boil, a dirty dressing, or a sneeze over a pan. If that food is then left warm, the bacteria can produce a toxin that a later reheat may not destroy. The plaster and the temperature control are both doing work. One does not cancel the other.

Do not sneeze or cough over food. Turn away, wash, and change gloves if you were wearing them. Do not scratch your face and carry on. Spots, boils, and ear or eye discharges that you cannot keep covered are a reason to speak to your manager before you start, not a reason to "be careful" over the salad. The manager decides whether you can do a job that is not ready-to-eat handling. You do not make that decision because you need the shift.

Fitness for work and the 48-hour rule

If you have diarrhoea or vomiting, you do not handle food, and you do not stay in a food room "doing paperwork" where you will touch handles and then other people's hands. You stay away until 48 hours after the symptoms have stopped. Feeling better on the morning after a bad night is not the test. You can still be shedding norovirus or other bugs. The Food Standards Agency's fitness to work guidance is the reference your manager will use. Your job is to tell them early enough that they can cover the shift.

Phone before you travel in. Do not arrive, start a prep list, and then mention you were ill in the night. Do not take anti-diarrhoea medicine and come to work so the symptoms are hidden. The medicine does not stop you being infectious. You also stay out of the food room, and you tell your manager, if you have infected wounds or sores, infected skin, a nose or throat infection you cannot keep from spreading, stomach pain, nausea, fever, or jaundice, or if a doctor has told you that you have an illness that can be passed through food. Tell them as well if someone you live with has diarrhoea or vomiting. Norovirus moves through households, and you do not handle food if there is a real chance you are carrying it. A return-to-work form does not replace that phone call.

You can return when you have been free of sickness and diarrhoea for 48 hours, and when any other exclusion your manager or a doctor has set has finished. A return-to-work conversation is normal. It is not an accusation. Answer it honestly. If you are still unsure, you do not start on ready-to-eat food while you "see how you feel". The cost of an extra day off is smaller than the cost of an outbreak traced to one shift. Managers should not encourage you to come in early. If you are pressured to, the safe method is still the 48 hours. Say so.

Other illnesses are not a free pass to ignore hygiene, and they are not automatically the same exclusion. A cold without sickness or diarrhoea still means you wash more often, you do not cough over food, and you stay off if you cannot work without touching your face every minute. A manager may move you off ready-to-eat work. A clean cut is covered with a blue waterproof plaster. An infected wound means you are moved off food. The rule you do not renegotiate is the one for diarrhoea and vomiting.

Visitors, deliveries and the end of the shift

Anyone walking through a food room is a hygiene control, not only the people on the rota. Delivery drivers leave raw-meat crates in the raw area. They do not carry them across the sandwich bench. Engineers and visitors wear a coat or apron if your method says so, and they wash their hands if they are going to touch food-contact surfaces. Friends do not sit in the kitchen to wait. Children are not in the food room during service.

At the end of the shift, aprons go to the wash, not into a locker still wet with the day's prep, and not back on tomorrow without a wash. Staff toilets are supplied so people will actually wash: soap, warm water, a way to dry hands. If the customer toilet is the one you use, the same standard applies, and you wash again when you re-enter the kitchen. "I washed in the toilet" and then handling the yard door, the bin and your phone is a new set of dirty hands. The basin in the kitchen is the last wash before food.

Training records show that you were shown this. They do not prove you did it at 7pm on a Friday. The evidence an officer trusts is the basin, the towels, the plaster in your pocket or on your hand, and whether you can say the 48-hour rule without reading it off the poster. Complete the record your manager asks for. Then work as if the poster were not there, because the habits are the control.

Worked example

A sandwich shop opens at 8. Two people are on. Three hygiene decisions arrive before the first coffee rush. None of them is solved by putting gloves on and carrying on.

The first person was sick at 10pm the night before last and once more at 1am yesterday. They feel fine now and the rota is short. They are still inside the 48 hours, because the last symptom was yesterday at 1am and it is now this morning. They do not start. They phone the manager, who sends them home and writes the absence as sickness exclusion, not as a no-show. They can come back once 48 hours have passed with no further symptoms. Anti-sickness tablets and a promise to "only do the till" are refused. The till is hands, and hands touch the pass.

The second person is fit for work and starts the ham prep. They wash at the basin before they touch the ham. Halfway through, they take a raw bacon delivery, move the packs into the bottom of the fridge, and come back to the board. The unsafe version is gloves still on from the ham, now wet with bacon juice, used to fold the next wrap. The safe version is gloves off, hands washed, apron changed because it brushed the crates, new gloves, and the board checked to be sure the raw packs never landed on it. The wash-hand basin has soap and towels. A pan that someone left in it is moved to the pot wash before they start, not after the rush.

At 9:30 they nick a finger on a tin. They stop, wash the cut, put on a blue waterproof plaster, then a glove, and tell the other person so someone else can check the area for a dropped plaster cap. They do not wrap the finger in tape from the office. At 11:00 they eat a piece of broken sandwich over the bin, not over the board, and wash before they go back to the green board. The manager's note for the day is short: one exclusion for sickness with a return time, one cut covered, basin cleared before service. That is a shift an officer can match to who was actually in the room.

What a manager or environmental health officer checks

Officers watch hands more than they listen to a policy. They look at the basin, then they ask what would stop you coming to work.

• Is the wash-hand basin free, with hot or warm water, soap, and disposable towels? Can you get to it from the bench without using the food sink?
• Show me how you wash. They may watch whether you dry your hands and how you turn the tap off.
• When did you last wash on this shift, and what had you just touched? "At the start" is a weak answer if you have since handled raw meat, the bin, or the till.
• If you wear gloves, when do you change them? Can you say that they are not a substitute for washing?
• What are you wearing? Hair tied, no watch, clean apron, outdoor coat off the bench. Is a plaster waterproof and detectable?
• What is the rule if you were sick in the night? The answer they want is 48 hours after the last symptom, and that you phone before you come in.
• Where would that exclusion be written, and who is allowed to shorten it? Nobody on the shift, including you.

A manager should be able to point to the same things without warning: a stocked basin, staff who can demonstrate a wash, a plaster rule that is actually in the first-aid box, and a sickness rule that is not waived for a busy weekend. The personal hygiene pages of Safer Food, Better Business match the visit only when the person at the basin can show the wash, not when they can point at the poster.

You might be asked why gel by the till is not enough after you have handled cash and then gone back to sandwiches. The expected answer is that gel does not replace soap and water, especially when hands may be soiled, and that norovirus in particular needs a proper wash. "Everyone uses the gel" is the answer that fails.

Check your understanding

Doing this as part of your job?

If your workplace uses Localyn, ask your manager for your personal training link — completing modules through it records the training in the store's food safety evidence automatically. Managers: issue links from the Training page in your dashboard.

Related pages

Food hygiene training recordsStaff training recordEHO readiness quizCare homesStaff training