Find out the ways you can respond to your food hygiene rating.
We’ll give you a new food hygiene rating each time we inspect your premises. How often we do planned inspections depends on the risk to people’s health. The greater the risk, the more often we’ll inspect your business.
If you make the improvements we suggested, you can ask for a revisit. The revisit has to be before the next scheduled inspection.
We’ll reassess your business and hopefully give you a new, higher food hygiene rating.
Look carefully at the food safety officer’s comments about your business. You can find them in the report or letter we gave you.
Make sure you take action to address any food hygiene issues. You can discuss anything you’re unsure about with your food safety officer. You can also ask them for more help on how to make improvements.
This is important because we can only revisit once between your planned inspections.
We’ll look at your overall food hygiene, not just the areas you’ve worked to improve.
So it’s possible that your hygiene rating could go down. You would not get a new rating until the next planned inspection and this may not be for some time.
Fill in the online revisit request form.
You need to explain what you’ve done to address the issues from your last inspection. Include supporting evidence, like receipts or photos to show you’ve done the work.
We may refuse your request if you do not give us enough information and evidence.
If we refuse your request we’ll tell you why. We’ll tell you the action you need to take or evidence you need to give us before we can approve your request.
If you do not agree with the decision to refuse your request, you can raise the matter with the lead officer for food.
If you cannot revolve matters with the lead officer for food, you can make a complaint.
There is no deadline to request a revisit. You can ask any time after you’ve made the necessary improvements, but we’ll set the date.
Usually, we won’t revisit during the 3 months after the inspection.
We may revisit sooner if we only asked you to make structural improvements, repairs, or upgrade equipment.
If you make your request during those first 3 months, we’re likely to revisit within 6 months of the inspection. We will not give you a date and time.
If you make your request after 3 months, we’re likely to revisit within 3 months of the request. Again, we will not give you a date and time.
If you’re still waiting for a revisit after these times, you can ask the lead officer for food to investigate.
If you cannot resolve matters in this way, you can make a complaint.
During the revisit, we’ll inspect your premises again. We’ll tell you in writing within 14 days what your new food hygiene rating is. This could stay the same as before, or it could go up or down.
As with the original hygiene rating, you can appeal if you think it is wrong or unfair. You can also submit a right to reply, which we’ll publish with your new rating.