Food hygiene rating
The popular and well-recognised National Food Hygiene Rating scheme, was adapted by the Food Standards Agency, from ALEHM’s earlier successful Scores On The Doors Scheme for London.
The scheme is a clear example of how ALEHM is helping to protect the health and wellbeing of Londoners.
Consumer transparency
Consumers provided information about the standards of food safety within their community.
Business prosperity
Businesses with unsatisfactory standards of hygiene were no longer able to gain a competitive advantage over business that traded safely.
Local Authority consistency
The scheme included effective and robust methods for ensuring consistent ratings by different council’s and Environmental Health Practitioners.
Adopted ALEHM’s Scores on the Doors Scheme
The project
The Association of London Environmental Health Managers launched the London Scores On The Doors Scheme on 8 October 2007. The scheme proved so successful with the public, that in 2008 ALEHM opened the scheme to UK local authorities beyond London.
“The London Scores on the Doors scheme involving 30 authorities, uses a website to display food hygiene information for public consumption. More than 80,000 businesses are covered by the scheme, making it the largest single scheme in England.
The panel was impressed with the processes in place to secure the consistency needed, as well as the participation of so many London boroughs. The evaluation shows that the project helped to focus enforcement activity and resources, resulting in significant improvements in business compliance and understanding of food law.“
– Food Standards Agency citation, 2008.
What we did
The Association of London Environmental Health Managers recognised the opportunity arising from increasing computerisation of local authority records, together with universal use of a national scoring scheme that was being used by Environmental Health Practitioners to determine the frequency of inspection for different businesses.
ALEHM commissioned a IT provider to create a data exchange mechanism that would allow different computer systems to regularly submit data in a common format for publication on a London-wide website.
The scheme was supported by inter-borough auditing against a newly developed consistency scheme, with an option for businesses to appeal if they beleived an iuncorrect rating had been applied. The scheme is delivered by London’s environmental health practitioners and is a clear example of how Alehm is enabling London Boroughs to deliver consistent support to food businesses across London, in support of the health and wellbeing of Londoners.
The 2015 follow-up sticker project, increased display of rating stickers by 21%.
More information
For more information about this project contact Paulette Samuels.
Delivering services or projects for you
ALEHM have successfully delivered a variety of services and projects in support of Londoners. Can we help to deliver the outcomes that you need?