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Free Food Hygiene Rating Checklists

Improve and maintain your organization’s status in practicing proper food hygiene using food hygiene rating checklists.

Food Hygiene Rating Checklist

  • Eliminate paperwork with digital checklists
  • Generate reports from completed checklists
  • Free to use for up to 10 users
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Download and use this free food hygiene rating checklist to cover various aspects of your organization’s food hygiene and safety protocols. As you prepare your business for the food hygiene inspection, document your findings and recommended improvement actions using this checklist. You can also do the following:

  1. Dedicate a title page for the basic details about your inspection, such as the date, inspector name, and location.
  2. Answer Yes-No questions about your organization’s Food Safety Management System (FSMS), Food Handling Practices and Cleaning, Temperature Control, Training, and Physical Business Structure.
  3. Include attachments and notes to provide further context on the subject. You can also annotate images to show visual inspection notes.
  4. Export the completed template into various file formats, including PDF, Excel, Word, or CSV.
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Food Hygiene Rating Checklist
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Published 1 Aug 2024
Article byPatricia Guevara
|3 min read

What is a Food Hygiene Rating Checklist?

A food hygiene rating checklist is a tool used to assess the safety and quality of food products and services. It’s used to identify potential risks and hazards associated with food production and consumption. This checklist is designed to help food businesses and consumers make informed decisions about the safety of the food they produce and purchase.

Benefits of Using a Checklist

By having a checklist in place, businesses can ensure that they are following the necessary food safety protocols. This can help to reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses and other health risks associated with consuming contaminated food.

Another benefit of a food hygiene rating checklist is that it can help businesses improve their overall food hygiene and safety standards. Using checklists and templates during audits and inspections allows them to identify areas where they need to make improvements and implement corrective actions.

Finally, a food hygiene rating checklist can help businesses to save money. Once checklists and templates are completed and exported into reports, they can identify areas where they can make cost-saving changes and reduce their overall food safety costs through proactive and preventive measures.

Types

Five-Star Rating System

As the most common type, this system is used to rate the overall hygiene of a food establishment. The rating is based on the cleanliness of the premises, the food handling practices, and the overall safety of the food being prepared and produced. It can range from one star, the lowest rating, to five stars, the highest rating.

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) System

 

This system is used to identify potential food safety hazards and to develop control measures to prevent them from occurring. The HACCP system is used to assess the safety of food production processes and to ensure that food is safe for consumption.

Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS)

Used to assess the hygiene standards of food businesses in the United Kingdom (England and Wales), the FHRS system’s ratings can range from zero as the lowest rating to five as the highest. Another version of the FHRS is the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS). It’s based on a scale of 0 to 4 and is currently used in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Example of a Food Hygiene Rating Report

Below is a visual sample of what a food hygiene rating report can look like:

How to Use and What to Include in a Food Hygiene Rating Checklist

To ensure you won’t miss any detail during your food hygiene audits and inspections, your checklist must include the following elements and sections:

  • Title Page – Allot this page for the basic details of your inspection, including the date, name of the inspector, and where it took place.
  • Inspection Checklist – Answer Yes-No questions about your current food hygiene practices. You can also include notes and attachments where you deem fit to provide further details and/or flag issues. This is usually divided into different sections:
    • FSMS
    • Food Handling Practices and Cleaning
    • Temperature Control
    • Training
    • Physical Business Structure
  • Completion and Sign-off – Don’t forget to conclude your checklist with comments and insights you might have during or after the inspection. Also, put the name and signature of the inspector for proper documentation.

FAQs About Food Hygiene Rating Checklists

Who can use a food hygiene rating checklist?

How often should you use a food hygiene rating checklist?

What are the common mistakes in using this checklist?

Raise Your Food Hygiene Rating with a Digital Tool

Why use SafetyCulture?

Using SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor), a workplace operations platform and food safety app, inspectors and auditors, along with health and safety officers, can ensure that their organizations adhere to strict food safety protocols.

Also, they can do the following and more using the platform’s powerful features:

  • Download, use, and customize food hygiene inspection forms, checklists, and templates. Attach photos and other media to help document your findings.
  • Maximize the platform’s Scheduling feature for conducting regular internal checks.
  • Flag issues in current processes and immediately resolve them by creating and assigning actions to respective personnel.
  • Leverage insights and data when benchmarking the historical performance of your organization’s food hygiene practices.
  • Generate data-rich food hygiene rating checklist reports you can use as future reference documents and records of your FSMS implementation.
  • Create and deploy training courses for continuous learning and alignment among your workers and officers.
  • Use Heads Up when sharing updates and food hygiene best practices across the organization.
  • Set up food safety sensors to help monitor food temperature, room humidity, and storage.
  • Maximize SafetyCulture’s integration capabilities to capture and access all relevant safety data in one place.

Try SafetyCulture for free!

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Patricia Guevara
Article by

Patricia Guevara

SafetyCulture Content Specialist
Patricia Guevara is a content writer and researcher for SafetyCulture. With her extensive content writing and copywriting experience, she creates high-quality content across a variety of relevant topics. She aims to promote workplace safety, operational excellence, and continuous improvement in her articles. She is passionate about communicating how technology can be used to streamline work processes, empowering companies to realize their business goals.

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