Inspection Records
Inspection Records hold official visits — Environmental Health, and any other inspecting body.
One Premises, One History
Inspection records belong to the Location, not an Area.
That is not a technicality. An EHO inspects the premises and issues one hygiene rating for it. A single kitchen does not get its own rating, so a record split across Front and Back would misrepresent what actually happened.
Recording a Visit
Add an inspection with:
- The date of the visit
- The outcome — Pass, Improvement Required, or Fail
- The authority — e.g. Environmental Health (optional)
- The FHRS rating awarded (optional)
- The inspector's name (optional)
Record it promptly, while the conversation is fresh. Inspectors often say more than the written report contains, and the verbal detail is frequently the most useful part — it is where you learn what they actually cared about.
Improvement Required
If the outcome is anything other than a clean pass, the record is only half done until you have captured what was raised and what you did.
Note each point, what you changed, and when. Then make the change somewhere it will survive: put it into a Safe Method, add it to a checklist, or create a scheduled cleaning task. A fix that lives only in one person's memory is a fix that lasts until that person leaves.
Your Hygiene Rating
If a rating is issued, record it. Your rating history in one place makes the trajectory obvious — and the trajectory is what tells you whether the fixes after the last visit actually held.
A rating that moved from 5 to 3 and back to 5 is a real story about a problem that was found and corrected. It is a considerably better story than a 5 that nobody can account for.
Between Visits
Inspection records are not only for visits that have happened.
Read your last one before you expect the next. Inspectors commonly revisit their previous points first, and arriving able to show that each has been addressed — with dated evidence — changes the tone of the whole visit.
Why Keep Them Here
Your local authority keeps its own record; you cannot rely on being handed it when you need it, and it will not contain the part that matters most — what you did next.
The full sequence, kept together, is the thing that demonstrates a business that responds. That is worth considerably more than any single outcome in isolation.