Food safety and hygiene requirements

Food safety legal requirements

All food businesses in the UK must comply with food safety and hygiene regulations. This applies whether you run a restaurant, café, pub serving food, hotel with catering facilities, or any business that prepares or serves food to the public.

The key requirements are: registering your food business, implementing a HACCP-based food safety management system, and providing allergen information to customers.

HACCP documentation for hospitality

Whilst the Food Standards Agency's 'Safer Food, Better Business' pack is suitable for most small food businesses, you must maintain ongoing documentation as evidence of your food safety procedures.

Allergen information for customers

You must provide clear allergen information for all food you serve. The way you provide this information depends on whether food is pre-packaged or prepared to order.

Prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) labelling

Since October 2021, stricter labelling rules apply to food that is packaged on your premises before customers select it.

Staff training and food hygiene

No UK nation requires food handlers to hold a formal food hygiene certificate. However, under Regulation (EC) 852/2004 you must ensure food handlers are supervised, instructed and trained in food hygiene matters commensurate with their work. Formal training such as a Level 2 food hygiene course is a common way to demonstrate this and supports a due diligence defence.

Training should cover:

• Personal hygiene and handwashing
• Safe food storage and temperature control
• Preventing cross-contamination
• Cleaning and sanitisation
• Allergen awareness and communication

Food hygiene ratings

Your local authority will inspect your premises and award a Food Hygiene Rating from 0 (urgent improvement needed) to 5 (very good):

Poor ratings can significantly damage your business reputation. If you receive a low rating, you can request a re-inspection once you have made improvements.