The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme is run by Havant Borough Council in partnership with the Food Standards Agency (FSA).
Its aim is to provide customers with at-a-glance information about the hygiene standards in food businesses, so that customers can make informed choices about where to buy and eat food.
The scheme covers a range of businesses where customers can eat or buy food. This includes:
Businesses receive a rating sticker and are encouraged to display it.
Following a food hygiene inspection by our food safety team, we will give the business a rating based on the standards of hygiene we find at the time. These include:
We rate the hygiene standards found at the time of inspection on a scale from '0' - this means urgent improvement is required to '5' - this means the hygiene standards are very good.
The rating shows how well the business does overall.
A business may do better in some areas than in others - the rating is designed to take this into account, including the areas that need the most improvement.
The rating is not a guide to the quality or value of the food the business prepares or sells.
The Food Standards Agency publishes food hygiene ratings on its website where you can search for local businesses.
Businesses can request an appeal, have a ‘right to reply’ and can request a re-visit inspection from their local authority.
The relevant forms can be found below. Please send the completed forms to ehealth@havant.gov.uk
Before making an appeal, business owners or managers should contact the officer who carried out the inspection first to understand why the rating was given.
If the business owner or manager still thinks that the rating is unfair or wrong, they can appeal in writing to the authority using an appeals form.
The right to reply allows the business to tell customers how the business has improved its hygiene standards or if there were unusual circumstances at the time of inspection.
This response will be published online, alongside the rating, by the local authority.
A food business owner or manager can request a re-visit to get a new rating when all the necessary hygiene improvements have been made.
The cost of carrying out a revisit inspection as of 1 April 2024 is set at £206.72.
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The food hygiene rating scheme is not an endorsement of current standards but reflects the rating we awarded at the time of the last inspection. The business may have made changes since then.
It may also take up to 28 days for the new rating to appear on the website after an inspection.