Monthly Review
The monthly review is a structured look back over the month for a Location.
Once Per Premises
Like inspections and health and safety, the review belongs to the Location, not to an Area. You review the premises as a whole, front and back together.
Working Through It
The review walks you through a compliance checklist. For each item you record your finding, add detail where it is needed, and note who carried out the review.
Do it with the records open. The value is in checking what actually happened, not in recalling what you think happened — a month is comfortably long enough to misremember, and people consistently remember the month as tidier than the records show.
Useful questions:
- Were checks completed on every trading day, or are there gaps?
- Did any critical temperature reading go unresolved?
- Were scheduled cleaning tasks completed, or repeatedly deferred?
- Any accidents, and did anything change as a result?
- Any pest activity, and was it closed out?
- Are safe methods still describing what the kitchen actually does?
- Is the allergen matrix current after this month's menu or supplier changes?
Write Down What Was Wrong
The instinct is to complete a review saying everything was fine. Resist it.
A review that finds nothing, month after month, is not evidence of a well-run kitchen — it is evidence that nobody is really looking. Every operation has something: a run of missed weekend checks, a fridge needing attention, a task nobody has completed since it was created.
Recording a problem alongside what you did about it is the strongest evidence you can produce. It shows a system that detects its own failures, which is exactly what a management system is supposed to do.
Then Act
A review that changes nothing is paperwork.
If checks are being missed at weekends, the weekend routine needs fixing. If one task is never completed, decide whether it matters — and if it does not, remove it, because a permanently unticked item trains everyone to ignore the list.
Why It Carries Weight
Inspectors look for evidence that someone is managing the system, not just operating it. Daily records show operation. A review, with findings and actions, shows management.
It is also the most reliable early warning you have. Standards rarely collapse; they drift. A month is roughly the shortest window in which drift becomes visible, and roughly the longest you can leave it before drift becomes habit.