Methodology

Last updated: 14 April 2026

How the FSA rates

The Food Standards Agency runs the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own equivalent, the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS). Both are reflected in the open data.

Every food business is inspected by a local authority Environmental Health Officer. The officer scores three areas:

  • Food hygiene and safety practices — storage, temperature control, cross-contamination
  • Structural compliance — cleanliness of the premises, layout, pest control
  • Confidence in management — training, record-keeping, ability to maintain standards

These combine into a single 0 to 5 score:

  • 5 — Very good
  • 4 — Good
  • 3 — Generally satisfactory
  • 2 — Improvement necessary
  • 1 — Major improvement necessary
  • 0 — Urgent improvement necessary

In Scotland (FHIS), the scoring is a binary “Pass” / “Improvement Required” rather than 0–5.

Inspection frequency

Inspections are risk-based. High-risk venues (raw meat handlers, vulnerable populations) are inspected every 6 months. Low-risk venues (packaged food retailers) may be inspected every 24 months or longer. We always display the last inspection date on every venue page — old ratings deserve scrutiny.

Display rules

  • Wales and Northern Ireland — displaying the sticker is legally mandatory
  • England — displaying is voluntary

This gap is the reason RatingCafe exists.

What RatingCafe does

  1. We pull the full FSA open data feed (~2 GB of JSON, all four UK nations) once per day.
  2. We normalise venue names, postcodes, and business types.
  3. We compute aggregates: per city, per type, per chain.
  4. We publish a page for every venue, including the ones whose owners would rather we didn’t.

What RatingCafe does not do

  • We do not write our own inspections.
  • We do not modify FSA scores.
  • We do not accept payment to hide, remove or boost a rating — ever.

Licence

FSA data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Our derived content and pages are © RatingCafe, licensed for personal and editorial use with attribution.