National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme

On the 4th of April 2011, Wealden District Council joined the National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme.

The scheme allows you to make informed choices about where to eat and buy food by providing information on hygiene standards. When food businesses are routinely inspected they are given a rating between 0 and 5. The better the hygiene standards, the higher the rating.

Each rating has a description to help you understand what the rating means. The descriptions are as follows:

• 0 = Urgent improvement necessary
• 1 = Major improvement necessary
• 2 = Improvement necessary
• 3 = Generally satisfactory
• 4 = Good
• 5 = Very good

Businesses receive certificates and window stickers to display so you can easily check their rating before entering. It's not yet mandatory for businesses to display their rating, so if you do not see a sticker in the window you might like to ask them why. Does the business have something to hide?

If you would like to see what the certificates and stickers look like please view our National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme Stickers and Certificates Examples (pdf) .

In addition to the stickers, the ratings are published online so even if a business does not put their sticker in the window, you can still check their rating from the comfort of your own home. The scheme has also now launched its own app so you can also search for ratings when you're out and about.

Visit the National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (external link) website to search for a food business or to download the app.

As more and more councils join the national scheme you'll be able to search for retailers and caterers across the country, so do remember to check for ratings if you're going away in the UK.

With around one million people suffering from food poisoning every year, we hope the scheme will help improve standards by allowing you to eat in the places with the best hygiene ratings.

So please look out for the stickers and let us know what you think by using the contact details below.

Further Information

We have produced a short video explaining how the scheme works in more detail. To view the film please visit our Introduction to the National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme page.

More information for food businesses can be found on our Wealden Business Help National Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (external link) website.

How our businesses are doing

Each Quarter we will update the table below with how many food businesses we have in the scheme and how many we have in each rating band.