Methodology
Data as of 24 August 2026.
Where the data comes from
All ratings on this site come from the Food Standards Agency's published register at ratings.food.gov.uk, released as open data and updated daily. This site rebuilds from that data every morning; every page shows the date of the data it was built from.
What the statuses mean, and what we leave out of rankings
Some businesses show "awaiting inspection" (new businesses not yet inspected), "awaiting publication" (a new rating still in the publication window, which includes time to appeal), or "exempt". These are statuses, not scores. They are never counted as low ratings and never appear in any ranking on this site. A rating that is under appeal is not published by the Food Standards Agency at all, so it cannot appear here.
Fairness to businesses
A rating describes what inspectors found on the day. Businesses can ask for a re-inspection at any time; where a business has been re-inspected and its new rating is pending, we say so. Where a business has published a response on the register, we show it alongside the rating. Ratings do not transfer when a business changes operator: the new operator starts as "awaiting inspection", and we mark these changes as such. Businesses that leave the register are removed from this site at the next daily update.
Scotland
Scotland runs a separate scheme, the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, which records "Pass" or "Improvement Required" rather than a 0 to 5 rating. Scottish pages show those results, and Scottish businesses are never mixed into 0 to 5 rankings.
Council figures
Council-level figures such as the share of businesses awaiting inspection and the age of ratings are calculated by us from the register. They are presented as computed measures, not as Food Standards Agency statistics. Historical enforcement figures (closures, prosecutions) come from the FSA's local authority returns, which were last published per council for 2019/20, and are labelled with that date wherever used.
Rating history and trend pages are planned for a future update and are not part of this site yet; every rating shown today is the current entry on the official register.