The introduction of food safety thanks to FOI

With so many choices of restaurants available to us, it can sometimes be a challenge to decide where to eat. For many of us, something we do to whittle this list down is to look at the restaurant’s food hygiene rating.

Today, you can search for hygiene ratings online or in the businesses window. Seeing a zero displayed in a restaurant’s window might help tip the balance to go somewhere else, hopefully a place with a slightly more reassuring hygiene score. But what does this have to do with privacy?

There was a time when restaurants could keep those hygiene scores private. In 2005, when someone made a Freedom of Information request for a copy of a local hotel’s last hygiene inspection report, the council refused. The requestor made a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office, and we ruled that the council should disclose the report.

Now ratings for all UK food establishments can be viewed online at ratings.food.gov.uk and the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland work with local authorities to improve people's access to information. It’s a legal requirement for food businesses in Northern Ireland and Wales to display their food hygiene rating sticker at in a prominent place. In England and Scotland, food hygiene information is published online for all to see.