Food hygiene ratings...

Chadford

Food Standards Agency - Search for food hygiene ratings

...a bit surprising (good and bad) for a couple of establishments that I frequent occasionally.

Ruperts slippers

One local to me was given a zero rating, caused quite a debate amongst the locals...

IronGiant

Plan B for my Birthday was getting a takeway from our nearest one.  Given it's 0 rating I'm glad we stuck with Plan A and ate out  

imightbewrong

One of our favourites was on zero for over a year - I don't even think that's possible - don't they have to close?  Or their data is not 100%

IronGiant

The date on my local was 24th Feb 2015.   Recently inspected – new rating to be published soon.
So they are at least a year out of date.  Having had my memory jogged, some time in the past, there didn't seem to be much activity there, maybe they were closed for a while.

Bubblin

Your other half's cooking can't be that bad!

Epicurus

To give the other side of this, one of the business' I work with has a dozen identical establishments.  All of them had a 5 star rating.  One of them has just been downgraded to 1 star on the basis the environmental health department has not received its food business registration form.  When it was pointed out to them they had happily rated the business 5 stars a year ago so clearly had logged its registration they still refused to adjust the rating.

The owner is now having to waste his time and money going through the appeals system.  Clearly it's not fair to downgrade this premises to 1 star on the basis of a registration form regardless of who lost it.  The net result is a hygiene rating system that is completely meaningless to anyone who knows how it works, yet can scare customers off perfectly safe establishments.  Still, setting up and running such a system probably created thousands of jobs...

Chadford

I looked into how it works and it seems OK:- Facilities, Hygiene and Food education. None of these things are exacting but to trip up on this because they don't do the few minutes of paperwork seems silly.

imightbewrong

There's no obligation to display your rating AFAIK - so the only people that will be scared away are those that check on the website presumably - ?  I suppose there is the 'word of mouth' issue.

Epicurus

Especially when the paperwork in question is the council's fault and not the operator.  He told me the form had been sent 3 times including by recorded delivery.  I've no reason to doubt this because I've experienced first hand how dangerously incompetent local authorities can be.