Are you from food hygiene? It was an odd question to be asked, but 46-year-old restaurateur Sameh Houeidi seemed anxious to know.
I was looking at the official hygiene rating sticker on the window of his Lebanese restaurant near Aldgate in London.
The green sign – the kind on display in food outlets and takeaways all over the country – recorded a four out of five rating for the little diner, optimistically called Bon Appetit.
The problem was that only four months ago, a concerned food inspector from Tower Hamlets council had given it a hygiene rating of just one.
Records available on the website of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) – which collates inspection results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – show that the inspector felt ‘major improvement was necessary’ when it came to ‘cleanliness and condition of facilities (including having appropriate layout, ventilation, hand-washing facilities and pest control) to enable good food hygiene’.
When it came to ‘hygienic handling of food, including preparation, cooking and storage’, Bon Appetit required further improvement.
After I had told Mr Houeidi that I wasn’t a food inspector, I asked why there was a sign in the window claiming the restaurant had been rated four out of five for hygiene when it had actually been rated at just one.
‘Because I don’t agree with the rating,’ he said. ‘I want to appeal it. The inspector didn’t know the law. He asked me to show him a pest control certificate but I’m not required to have one. It’s just a waste of money. It’s not required by law as long as my restaurant is clean, which it is.’
Sadly, this attitude is not unusual, while many hospitality businesses strive for perfection in hygiene, others appear not to care, misleading customers by displaying fake or out-of-date ratings. Indeed, no less than 37 per cent of businesses either don’t display a sticker, or display one that is fake.
Recently, curious about some of the eateries near my home in east London, I checked out almost 30 – and found problems with more than a third of them. None of those given a rating of one had displayed the damning results in their windows.
Two were claiming they had ratings of four when they really had ratings of one. And another two were displaying ratings of five – when records showed they hadn’t even been inspected.
Korean restaurant Bento Bab on Commercial Street was displaying misleading ratings of four
The Food Hygiene Ratings System was introduced by the FSA in 2010 with the intention of driving up standards. Annual inspections check for how food is handled, prepared, cooked and stored. They also examine the physical condition of a business – its cleanliness, layout, ventilation, pest control regime and check if staff are adequately trained in hygiene.
Within a couple of weeks, a premises will be given a rating from zero, meaning ‘urgent’ improvement is necessary, to five, which denotes ‘very good’ hygiene standards. Local authorities then provide the outlets with rating stickers to display.
If poorly-rated premises show no signs of improvement, enforcement action can be taken, which ranges from seizing food suspected of being unfit for consumption, to issuing legal notices requiring or forbidding the use of certain processes or equipment.
Breaching the Food Safety Act can result in fines of up to £5,000 per offence and/or a prison sentence of up to six months. However, there is an enormous problem with the way the Food Hygiene Rating System is administered. While it is compulsory for food outlets to publicly display the findings of inspections in Wales and Northern Ireland, there is no requirement in England.
This means a restaurant or takeaway with a poor hygiene rating can choose to keep that a secret from its unwitting customers.
Six of the eight one-rated outlets I visited had no ratings on display – while two, Bon Appetit and Korean restaurant Bento Bab on Commercial Street, were displaying misleading ratings of four.
When I asked Bento Bab why it was displaying a four-rating, a male staff member said: ‘We have applied to the council for a reinspection.’ Pressed on why a one-rated sticker was not on display, he claimed the inspector hadn’t provided one.
Among the one-rated establishments that did not display their ratings was La Dolce Vita on Leman Street. The owner Khaled Nasrai told me he disagreed with the rating from his last inspection in February. ‘There was just a broken freezer door, that’s all,’ he said. ‘There were no problems with hygiene. We got a new freezer door. I thought the rating I was given was unfair.’ Asked why he had not displayed his inspection rating, he said: ‘No-one wants to come somewhere with a one-rating.’
Both one-rated establishments did not display their rating
Another not displaying a one-rating was chicken takeaway PFC Watney Market also on Commercial Road. Owner Mohammad Afraz Miah said the rating came as a result of his failing to fill in some forms, but he had addressed the situation and hoped another inspection would raise his rating.
When I asked the – unnamed – manager of Wings Of East nearby the same question, he said he was ‘too busy’ and hung up.
Pizza restaurant Circle & Slice on Whitechapel Road was given a one-rating in February. The manager, who declined to give her name, said: ‘We used to have a four-star rating but it went down a few months ago. The inspector told us what to do, and we’ve done that. We’re now waiting for a reinspection.’
Shalamar Kebab House on Commercial Road displayed a five-rating, but the FSA register said it was ‘awaiting inspection’. However, the proprietor, Ahmed Nazir, blamed Tower Hamlets for this confusion because another of his businesses, Shalamar Catering, located in the basement of an adjoining building, has a five rating – which the register confirms.
‘We keep asking them to do an inspection here, but they don’t come,’ he says.
An inquiry into food standards by the National Audit Office in 2019 found that ‘the cost of delivering food controls in England in 2016-17 was an estimated £164million’. But if businesses in England can choose not to display the findings of food hygiene inspections, isn’t much of this a waste of money? The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) thinks so and has called for compulsory display in England.
Its vice president, Chris Elliott, a professor of food safety, says: ‘In Wales, 92 per cent of food businesses display a hygiene rating sticker, and in Northern Ireland 91 per cent. But in England it’s only 69 per cent.’
He says England chose not to make the system compulsory during the David Cameron era, when it was considered to have ‘nanny state’ connotations.
‘It really sets people in England at a big disadvantage,’ he says. ‘Where businesses have lower food hygiene ratings, more people get food poisoning, so more people are off work, which is a cost to business and, in serious cases, to the NHS.’
The CIEH isn’t alone in wanting display to be made compulsory in England – so does the FSA. Its head of delivery standards, Karen McCloskey, says: ‘Food hygiene standards remain very high, with 97 per cent of businesses achieving a satisfactory rating of three or above. Our annual audits show most businesses display the correct rating, but we take reports about inaccurate display very seriously.
‘The FSA would like to see display of food hygiene ratings made mandatory through legislation in England.’ Its latest audit found 91 per cent of food outlets in England that did display their rating were the correct ones – meaning that almost one in ten weren’t.
If you add those that didn’t display anything – the ones with dreadful ratings to hide – the picture looks grim.
As Professor Elliott says, it isn’t just chicanery – there’s fakery too. I was able to buy a ‘novelty’ five-rated food hygiene sticker on eBay within five minutes for less than £20. It features an almost identical logo as the real one and claims to be a ‘Food Quality Rating’. It even provides a handy website address – food.agency/review – that goes nowhere.
Small print on the top right hand corner of the certificate declares: ‘This rating is self-proclaimed and operate[d] solely by the owner’. To the average passerby, the sticker appears genuine.
When I challenged the seller – whose details I will not reveal – he replied: ‘There are many shops, both on and off eBay, selling such stickers. They are meant for personal use. Why would anyone want to use this or any other novelty sticker to represent their business? Additionally, anyone could print their own sticker, laminate it and use it.’
I asked the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether there were any plans to make the
display of hygiene ratings compulsory in England. It did not respond. Neither did Tower Hamlets council, on whose patch this is happening.
All of which leaves a pretty nasty taste in the mouth.
