What an EHO checks in a hospitality kitchen, and how the rating is scored

How the visit works

EHOs from your local authority inspect food businesses on a frequency set by risk. A busy restaurant, pub or hotel kitchen might see them every 18 months to two years, and sooner after a poor rating, a complaint or a change of operator. They do not book ahead. They will identify themselves, they are entitled to access the premises and to see your records, and most will walk the kitchen first and read the paperwork second. Most visits end with a conversation about what they found, and anything firmer than advice is kept for things that put people at risk.

The three things the rating scores

The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme score, the 0 to 5 on the sticker, is built from three assessed areas:

• Food hygiene practice: how food is handled on the day. Temperatures of fridges and hot holding, cooking and cooling, cross-contamination controls, personal hygiene, allergen handling.
• Structure and cleanliness: the fabric of the premises. Cleanliness of surfaces and equipment, the state of walls and floors, pest control, ventilation, and hand-wash basins that work and are stocked.
• Confidence in management: whether the officer believes standards will hold once they have left. This is where your documented food safety management system is assessed (usually SFBB in a smaller kitchen), along with your diary, your review pages and your training records.

Operators tend to underestimate the third area, and it caps the score. A spotless kitchen with no working records cannot get a 5, because the officer has no evidence that the day of the visit is a normal day. It works the other way too. Made-up paperwork wrecks confidence in management even when the food handling is sound, which is why it does so much damage.

What they look at in practice

• Fridge, freezer and hot-hold temperatures, checked with their own probe against the ones you recorded.
• The SFBB pack or equivalent: safe methods filled in, diary signed daily, the 4-weekly review completed.
• Separation of raw and ready-to-eat food, in storage and in preparation.
• Allergen information: whether the matrix matches the current menu, and whether staff can answer an allergen question correctly.
• Cleaning schedules, and whether the scheduled cleaning has visibly been done.
• Pest evidence: droppings, gnaw marks, proofing gaps, and your pest control records.
• Probe calibration, date labelling, defrosting practice, and staff sickness rules.
• Training records for anyone handling food.

Being ready without a panic clean

A panic clean does not work, because most of the inspection is about habits. Date labels, diary signatures and temperature histories cannot be put right in an afternoon. So close the gap between how the kitchen runs on a busy Friday night and how it runs with someone watching, until there is nothing left to be caught out on.

• Once a month, walk the kitchen the way the officer would: temperatures, labels, hand-wash stations, the underside of things.
• Keep the diary honest and up to date, and complete the SFBB 4-weekly review when it is due.
• Fix the fabric problems you have been living with: the cracked tile, the fridge seal, the missing thermometer.
• Make sure the allergen matrix moved when the menu did.
• Tell the team that inspections are unannounced, and that when an officer arrives somebody goes to fetch the manager and nobody tries to keep them at the door.

If the visit goes badly, the scheme rules give you a right to reply and a right to request a re-score visit. The better route is the boring one, though. When the records are a true account of the kitchen, nobody has to remember what story they told.

This guide is general information for UK hospitality operators, not legal advice. Requirements can differ by premises and local authority: your fire risk assessment, your food safety management system and your local EHO are the authorities on your own site.