Food hygiene rating

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.

By 2008 this scheme resulted in ALEHM’s Food Coordinating Group receiving a Food Champion Award, from the Food Standards Agency. Later in 2008, with over 100 local authorities are using the London scheme, the Food Standards Agency adopted a similar scheme for England and Wales.

The London scheme was modified to reflect the National Food Hygiene Scheme in 2011. In 2015 ALEHM delivered a project on behalf of our partner to increase the proportion of food businesses displaying a rating sticker within several London Boroughs.

“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 Lond0n-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 Tay Potier.