EHO inspections — what to expect and how to score a 5

The Environmental Health Officer doesn't book in advance. One Tuesday morning they walk through your door, show ID, and start looking at your fridge. By the time they leave you'll know whether the sticker in your window will say 5, 3, or 1. This is everything they look at — and exactly what you need on hand to score a 5.

How the scoring actually works

Every food business in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is rated 0–5 on three areas:

1. Hygiene and food handling — how you handle, prepare, cook, store and clean.
2. Structural compliance — the condition of the building, equipment and facilities.
3. Confidence in management — your documented systems and how well you understand them.

The lowest of the three drags the others down. You can have a spotless kitchen and an A-grade structure, but if your paperwork is missing you'll still score a 2. Most failures are paperwork failures, not dirty kitchens.

What the inspector physically checks

Expect them to:

• Walk the kitchen with their own thermometer.
• Open every fridge and freezer, including the storage room.
• Ask to see the hand-wash basin — separate from prep sinks, with hot water, soap and disposable towels.
• Check the floor-to-ceiling state of the walls, ceilings, and food contact surfaces.
• Look behind and under equipment.
• Check pest activity evidence (or lack of) and your pest contract.
• Watch a member of staff actually work, briefly.

Then they sit down and ask for paperwork. This is where most operators lose points.

The records the EHO will ask for

Have all of these immediately to hand — physically or digitally — and you remove half the risk before they ask.

Food safety management:

• Your SFBB pack or full HACCP plan, with the diary up-to-date.
• The current day's fridge and freezer temperature logs.
• Cooking temperature checks for high-risk foods.
• Cleaning schedules with sign-offs.

Traceability:

• Supplier list with contact details.
• Delivery notes from the last 12 months (or digital equivalent).

Allergens:

• An allergen matrix for every menu item.
• The procedure for handling allergen queries from customers.
• For PPDS food: full ingredient labels with the 14 allergens emphasised.

Staff:

• Food hygiene certificates for everyone who handles food (Level 2 minimum).
• Training records for allergens, cross-contamination, cleaning.
• A "fitness to work" policy — staff don't come in with diarrhoea or vomiting for 48 hours.

Pest control:

• Current contract with a pest control company.
• Last visit report and any actions taken.

Equipment and structure:

• Gas safety certificate (annual).
• PAT testing records.
• Calibration records for your probe thermometer.

The questions they will ask

They're not just looking. They'll quiz whoever's running the kitchen:

• "What's the cooking temperature for chicken?" (75°C, or 70°C for two minutes.)
• "What temperature should the fridge be?" (Below 5°C; aim for 1–4°C.)
• "Show me how a customer with a nut allergy would order this dish."
• "Where do you wash your hands?"
• "What do you do if a fridge breaks down at 6am?"

The wrong answer here costs you a full point on Confidence in Management — regardless of how clean the kitchen is. Train every supervisor on these questions before opening week.

The five most common reasons people score below 3

1. No documented food safety management system. Or it exists, but the diary stopped being filled in three weeks ago.
2. Allergen procedures missing or vague. Verbal-only allergen info for pre-packed direct sale is non-compliant.
3. Cross-contamination risks. Raw meat above ready-to-eat in the fridge. Shared chopping boards.
4. Inadequate hand-washing facilities. No soap, no hot water, or the basin is also used for prep.
5. Pest evidence with no action taken. Mouse droppings under a unit with no recent pest visit kills your score on the spot.

How to be permanently ready, not "panic ready"

The kitchens that consistently score 5 share one habit: they don't prepare for the EHO. The records are already up to date because they're part of the daily flow, not a binder pulled out twice a year. Specifically:

• Temperature logs taken automatically, not at the end of the day from memory.
• Opening and closing checklists that have to be ticked off in an app before the next stage can start.
• Allergen matrix and menu in one place so they can't drift out of sync.
• Staff training records that flag expiries before they lapse.
• One audit log that the EHO can be walked through in five minutes.

That's the entire pitch of Dilagee. Your due diligence is done, every day, automatically — so when the EHO does walk in, you've already passed the inspection. They're just confirming it.

After the inspection

You'll get a copy of the inspector's notes. If you scored less than 5, you can:

1. Act on the recommendations — which are always listed.
2. Request a re-rating visit (England and Wales) after at least three months. There's a small fee in some areas.
3. Appeal the rating if you think it's wrong, within 21 days.

Most importantly: fix the system, not the symptom. If you scored a 3 because the fridge log was missing for two weeks, the answer is not "tell the supervisor to be better." The answer is "the system that asks them to do it once a day in their phone, before they can clock out." Fix it once.

Score a 5 and you've earned the sticker in the window. Stay a 5, and you've built a business.