Get answers to your questions about the National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme in Eastbourne.
What Type of Businesses will be Included in the Scheme?
Most food businesses will be covered by the scheme including restaurants, shops, cafes, takeaways, delicatessens, care homes, hotels and pubs.
How Does the Scheme Work?
The scheme will serve as a good advertisement for businesses that practice high standards of food hygiene.
Restaurants, takeaways, cafes, sandwich shops, pubs, hotels, supermarkets and other retail food outlets, as well as any other business where consumers can eat or buy food, will be given a rating. This rating will be determined by Environmental Health Officers during inspections.
The owners of food businesses will be issued with a certificate and sticker for them to display to the public in their food premises. Display of the rating is voluntary. Ratings will be based upon what was found on the day of inspection by our Environmental Health Officers.
The hygiene standards found at these inspections are rated on a scale ranging from zero at the bottom (which means ‘urgent improvement necessary’) to a top rating of five (‘very good’).
The rating will be awarded to all food businesses included in the scheme inspected from 4th April 2011 onwards. Shortly afterwards, ratings will be uploaded onto the national website and published here.
Consumers can also search the national system using the link from this page, where you can search by region, address or postcode.
How Will Businesses be Scored?
Scores will be based on the level of risk that a food premises poses to customers from their food hygiene arrangements.
The scheme does not reflect the quality of the food being served, but how hygienically the food is prepared. Three criteria are used for providing a rating:
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Food hygiene and safety - food handling practices, cooking, chilling, preventing cross contamination and temperature control.
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Structure and cleaning - cleanliness, layout, condition of the structure, lighting, ventilation, facilities etc.
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Confidence in management - the track record of the business, attitude of the present management towards hygiene and safety, hygiene and food safety technical knowledge available and satisfactory documented procedures.
Further Information
Find out how to improve your Rating Scheme score by downloading our Good Hygiene Advice Guide for Businesses in PDF format below.
If you have any queries about the introduction of the scheme in Eastbourne, please contact the council's Food Safety Team using the details below.
