Quick & Easy Guide: How To Get A 5 Star Food Hygiene Rating

When deciding where to eat consumers consider many things, but perhaps the most important thing they will consider is your business’s food hygiene rating. The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme is run in conjunction with local authorities and will rate a business’s hygiene standards between 1 and 5 stars. During an assessment, you will be scored on three areas of hygiene: premises, food handling processes, and confidence in management. In order to achieve a 5 star food hygiene rating, you must score highly in all three areas. The following guide will walk you through what the Environmental Health Officer (EHO) will be looking to see in each of these areas, and how to attain the maximum score in all criteria so that you can earn a 5 star food hygiene rating for your business.

All three categories are scored via the imposition of intervention points. You are aiming to receive 0 intervention points in all 3 categories. The possible intervention points range from 0 to 25 in multiples of 5, and scores will be assigned based upon severity of faults as well as volume. To achieve a 5 star food hygiene rating, your total number of intervention points across the 3 categories cannot be greater than 15, and no specific category can incur more than 5 points. This means that, whilst there is a margin for error, it is a narrow one. As such, you cannot rely on this buffer to help you to achieve your 5 star food hygiene rating; you must aim for perfection.

Premises

First impressions are vital when it comes to your premises. The assessment begins as soon as the EHO arrives, and as a result, the hygiene standard of the premises can really set the tone for the whole inspection. To start, it is vital to ensure that the premises are fit for purpose. There should be dedicated handwashing facilities, a mains water connection and hot water access, drainage, and lights to spot hazards. The kitchen’s construction and surfaces should be adequately suitable for food preparation. Physical separation should exist to limit the risk of cross-contamination, ideally allowing the journey from preparation to service to flow logically. Equipment must be in working condition, operated as per the manufacturer’s instruction, and moveable in order to be cleaned and inspected. Lack of necessary equipment can be in and of itself the difference between a 5 star and a 4 star rating, even if replacements are on their way; regular maintenance and replacement in good time can combat this.

As with much of ensuring hygiene throughout, much of this section comes down to processes. Whilst the absence of pests is clearly important, it is a legal requirement to have systems in place to prevent access to pests and control any who may get in. Similarly, a waste system should be in place, with regularly cleaned and emptied bins with lids, adequate storage in a hygienic area, and a provision for the removal of waste. Finally, there need to be systems in place, such as a rota, for the regular cleaning and disinfecting of your premises, ensuring that the right chemicals are used safely to maintain good hygiene throughout. With adequate, evidenced systems in place, receiving no intervention points for your premises should be comfortably attainable.

Food handling process

The range of food you serve, the methods used for storing, preparing and serving it, and the prevention of food hazards are vital pieces in succeeding in this category. This section is primarily focused on ensuring you do not serve contaminated food, due to the risks it could pose to the customer. Food contamination comes in 4 different forms - bacterial hazards, physical hazards, chemical hazards, and allergenic ingredients - with the avoidance of contamination from all of these being crucial. In order to do so, you must take steps when storing and preparing the food, and have systems in place to ensure this too. When storing food, chilled and frozen food must be kept at the FSA recommended temperatures, and fridges and freezers regularly checked to ensure they are at the right levels. High-risk, raw, and ready-to-eat foods should be separated to avoid cross-contamination. Fresh ingredients should be labelled to indicate age, checked before use to ensure freshness, and all ingredients should be thrown out when reaching their best before or use-by dates. When preparing food, there should be a continued separation of high-risk, raw, and ready-to-eat foods, often signified by chopping board colours. There is no existing set colour scheme for chopping boards (for example, meat does not have to be red), but having a set scheme that all your staff know and follow is a straightforward way to demonstrate your effort to limit cross-contamination. If possible, it would be sensible to divide your food areas between dirty tasks, such as washing up, and clean tasks, such as plating up, to further reduce the risk of cross=contamination

In the previous category, the results largely depend on your actions, setting up your premises correctly and ensuring systems are in place to maintain these. This section, however, relies on any staff you employ to maintain good practices too. The EHO is entitled to, and will, ask your staff about their knowledge of the food safety aspects of their roles. It is your responsibility to ensure that they understand what is required of them from a food safety standpoint, the processes in place to prevent contamination of food, and why those processes exist. Perhaps the most important of these areas is handwashing; if hand hygiene standards are not being met, you are likely to receive at least 10 intervention points, automatically preventing you from being able to achieve a 5 star food hygiene rating. As a result, it is important to ensure all staff who handle food know how to adequately wash their hands, and that this is something they actually do, particularly following situations that could lead to contamination.

Confidence in management

Confidence in management is the broadest of categories and overlaps somewhat with some of the tasks which are already covered by the first two categories. It is effectively a category which addresses the food hygiene culture which you have created. The EHO knows that a visit is just a snapshot of the day-to-day business, and thus will want to ensure that the processes they see demonstrated are always being followed. Every business is required by law to have and use its own Food Safety Management System. This is a system based upon the principles of HACCP, specifically tailored to the unique nature of your business, with acknowledgements of the types of food you prepare, the space you prepare it in, and any other specific challenges you may face. The evidence that the systems mentioned in the previous sections are being followed correctly will also be checked by your EHO, and absence of such evidence can constitute a significant issue. 

The final element of confidence in management, and indeed in achieving a 5 star food hygiene rating, is how well the culture of food hygiene is maintained. All staff handling food should be trained in food hygiene, with evidence supplied to show this. Supervisors should be particularly knowledgeable, so as to ensure standards are maintained and processes are followed by all staff. Staff should be provided with suitable PPE for any task that may require it, and a uniform policy should be in place to limit the risks of cross-contamination. Visual cues, whilst not necessary, can also contribute to an overall sense of attentiveness to food hygiene. Finally, staff should be given sufficient time to complete any set task. Rushed tasks can lead to cut corners, which reduces the efficacy of the task, limiting its usefulness.

Ultimately, as the EHO can come for an inspection at any time, with no warning, you should be doing everything possible to ensure that regardless of when an inspection takes place, you are prepared, you have effective systems in place to maintain hygiene standards, and that these systems are being followed by all staff, who know their roles and responsibilities. Despite how it may feel, the EHO is not seeking to fail you; as long as you are taking every precaution to maintain hygiene, you stand in good stead to achieve your 5 star food hygiene rating.