London Restaurants Rated Zero For Food Hygiene

Food hygiene ratings issued by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are often displayed with pride by restaurant owners who successfully meet the high standards required to be awarded top scores. However, we expect a few particular businesses throughout the country won’t be keen to do the same, after being awarded zero ratings by the FSA in 2016.

For example, in Bromley, the results of inspections revealed earlier in the year identified 77 businesses in the food service industry scored less than two out of five for food hygiene standards. These include restaurants, hotels, cafes, pubs and takeaways. Among these, four businesses were given a rating of zero, requiring urgent improvement.

Local councils are usually responsible for carrying out checks in line with FSA guidelines, and ratings can be provided accordingly. The primary factors that inspectors take into account include the following:

1) The handling food on the premises, including how it is stored, prepared and cooked.

2) The maintenance of the premises itself including the cleanliness and overall condition of the kitchen, ventilation, other important facilities and the building itself.

3) What measures are in place to ensure that high standards are maintained, and that someone is directly responsible for this.

It is worth noting that businesses may fail inspections due to technicalities related to the third point. Since the figures for Bromley were announced earlier in the year, multiple businesses came forward to explain their low ratings were related to missing paperwork and similar administrative issues, rather than the cleanliness of their premises.

However, all FSA guidelines are in place for a reason and it is important that businesses do everything they can to comply with regulations. To ensure that commercial kitchens are kept clean, kitchen deep cleaning services like those we offer at KDC are essential on a regular basis. These should be used in conjunction with regular on-site cleaning and maintenance, rather than as a substitute for cleaning regularly.

A major part of our offering is our kitchen duct and extraction system cleaning service, which is effective for helping to maintain proper ventilation systems. These need to be clean and free of grease build-ups in order to comply with both food safety and fire safety regulations, making them doubly important to maintain.

‍