The headline: 375,015 ratings, and a 28-point spread by business type
Across 363 UK local authorities, 375,015 hospitality establishments carry a food hygiene rating: restaurants, cafes and canteens, other catering premises, takeaways and sandwich shops, pubs, bars and nightclubs, mobile caterers, and hotels, B&Bs and guest houses. Nationally, 77.0% of rated establishments hold the top FHRS score of 5. Scotland runs a separate scheme, the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS), which reports Pass or Improvement Required rather than a numeric score, and its pass rate is 91.6%.[1]
Those two national figures are the ones most people would quote if asked how well the UK's hospitality sector is doing on food hygiene. They are also, on their own, a poor guide to any individual business type or area. The gap between the best and worst performing business type is 28 percentage points, and the gap between the best and worst performing local authority (among those large enough to compare) is over 50 points. This article works through the Food Standards Agency's open ratings data[2] by business type and by local authority, and sets out what operators should and should not read into the pattern. The full dataset sits in our UK Hospitality Food Hygiene Map.[1]
Ratings by business type: takeaways lag every other segment
The table below ranks the six hospitality business types the Food Standards Agency's data covers by the share holding the top FHRS rating of 5. Retailers, schools, hospitals, care premises, distributors, manufacturers and farms are excluded as non-hospitality.[1]
| Business type | Rated establishments | Top rating (5) share |
|---|---|---|
| Other catering premises | 75,527 | 89.0% |
| Mobile caterers | 31,085 | 88.3% |
| Hotels, B&Bs and guest houses | 14,595 | 85.3% |
| Pubs, bars and nightclubs | 50,619 | 76.9% |
| Restaurants, cafes and canteens | 140,160 | 75.4% |
| Takeaways and sandwich shops | 63,029 | 61.0% |
Takeaways and sandwich shops sit apart from the rest of the sector: 61.0% top-rated against a 77.0% national average, and 28 percentage points below other catering premises, the highest-scoring type. Restaurants, cafes and canteens, the largest single category at 140,160 rated establishments, sit close to the national average at 75.4%. Pubs, bars and nightclubs are almost exactly on the national figure at 76.9%.
Hotels, B&Bs and guest houses (85.3%) and mobile caterers (88.3%) both outperform the average by a wide margin, and other catering premises, a broad category covering venues such as workplace and event catering, leads the sector at 89.0%. The pattern is consistent enough across the dataset that business type, not just location, is doing real work in explaining any individual establishment's rating relative to its peers.
Why takeaways score differently
The data records outcomes, not causes, so any explanation for the takeaway gap is inference rather than something the Food Standards Agency states directly. That said, several structural features of the segment are consistent with lower average scores: takeaway kitchens are often smaller and more cramped than restaurant kitchens, which makes the physical hygiene and pest-control standards inspectors check harder to maintain; staff turnover in the segment tends to be high, which works against the consistent food-safety management systems inspectors look for; and many takeaways operate with tighter margins that leave less headroom for the equipment upgrades or refurbishment that a poor inspection can require. None of this excuses a low rating, but it explains why the gap is a segment-wide pattern rather than a handful of outliers.
Ratings by local authority: a wider gap than any single business type shows
Local authority results vary even more than business type results. Among the 328 local authorities with at least 150 rated hospitality establishments (smaller authorities are excluded from this comparison to avoid small-sample noise), the highest top-rating share is 97.5% and the lowest is 42.7%, a gap of 54.8 percentage points.[1]
At the top of the table, Bassetlaw (716 establishments, 97.5% top-rated) and Wrexham (689 establishments, 97.1%) lead the country, followed closely by Ipswich and Thanet (both 95.5%) and Chichester (95.0%). At the other end, Blaenau Gwent (306 establishments, 42.7% top-rated) has the lowest share in the league table, with Waltham Forest (1,069 establishments, 49.8%) and Wigan (1,605 establishments, 51.6%) close behind.[1]
Establishment count and rating quality are not the same thing. Birmingham has more rated hospitality establishments than any other UK local authority, 6,026 in total, with 63.3% top-rated; a large, dense hospitality market does not automatically track a high or low share. Leeds (4,687 establishments, 73.0% top-rated), Westminster (4,492 establishments, 70.0%) and North Yorkshire (4,382 establishments, 83.7%) are the next largest markets by establishment count, and their top-rating shares span a 20-point range between them.[1]
Why the local authority gap is this wide
Several factors plausibly contribute to the spread, and the Food Standards Agency's own guidance on the scheme points to more than one at once: inspection frequency and backlog differ by local authority, since environmental health resourcing is set locally; the age, density and mix of the local hospitality stock differs, and areas with a higher concentration of takeaways (the lowest-scoring business type nationally) will see that reflected in their local authority average; and there is genuine underlying variation in standards between areas. No single cause explains the full 55-point gap, and reading a local authority's rating share as a verdict on any specific business within it, rather than as an area-level pattern, is not something the data supports.
What a rating does, and does not, tell you
Three limits matter before drawing conclusions from any of the figures above.
- A rating is a point-in-time snapshot, not a live status. It reflects the most recent completed inspection on file at the time of the data pull, which for some establishments may be months or longer in the past. Some establishments are recorded as awaiting inspection, or exempt from the scheme entirely, and both are excluded from the rated totals used throughout this article.
- Scotland is not comparable on a numeric basis. The Food Hygiene Information Scheme reports Pass or Improvement Required, not a 0-5 score, so the 91.6% Scottish pass rate and the 77.0% England/Wales/Northern Ireland top-rating share are two different measures answering related but distinct questions, not one figure split by nation.
- Small local authorities are excluded from area comparisons for a reason. League tables here are restricted to the 328 local authorities with at least 150 rated hospitality establishments, out of 363 covered in total, because a handful of poor or excellent inspections in a very small authority can swing a percentage sharply without reflecting a genuine pattern.
What this means for reputation and the wider hospitality landscape
Food hygiene ratings function as a public reputation signal independent of customer reviews. They are searchable by name and postcode, they are frequently surfaced in delivery-app listings, and a rating below the norm for a business's own segment is more visible to a prospective customer than the same score would be in a lower-scoring segment. A restaurant rated 4 sits below 75.4% of its peers; a takeaway rated 4 sits closer to the middle of a segment where 61.0% hold the top score. The same numeric rating carries a different reputational weight depending on business type.
Ratings sit alongside the other pressures shaping the UK hospitality sector at the moment, including the churn in openings and closures and the financial strain covered in our wider hospitality research. Operators assessing where their business stands, competitively and financially, may find it useful to read the hygiene picture together with the broader sector data in our UK Hospitality Insolvency Index, which covers the financial-distress side of the same industry this article's ratings data describes.
Using the data
The full breakdown behind this article, including every business type and the complete local authority league tables with a CSV download, is published in our UK Hospitality Food Hygiene Map. It is compiled from the Food Standards Agency's open Ratings API[3] and is aggregate data only: no individual establishment name, address or FHRSID appears anywhere in the dataset, and every figure in this article is a count or percentage grouped by local authority or business type.[1]
If a hygiene inspection has triggered remedial works, retraining or equipment replacement in your business, those costs generally need to be captured correctly in your accounts, whether as repairs, capital expenditure or staff training. Our takeaways, restaurants, pubs and bars, hotels and guesthouses, cafes and coffee shops and caterers and street food hubs cover the tax and accounting issues specific to each segment.
Sources
- Hospitality Tax UK Hospitality Food Hygiene Map, July 2026 data pull. 375,015 rated hospitality establishments across 363 local authorities and six business types; national FHRS top-rating (5) share 77.0%; Scotland FHIS pass rate 91.6%; takeaways and sandwich shops lowest-rated business type at 61.0% top-rated; other catering premises highest at 89.0%; local authority top-rating shares range from 42.7% (Blaenau Gwent) to 97.5% (Bassetlaw) among the 328 local authorities with at least 150 rated establishments; Birmingham the largest local authority hospitality market by establishment count (6,026). Available at: /research/uk-hospitality-food-hygiene-map. Compiled from Food Standards Agency data. Retrieved 2026-07-23.
- Food Standards Agency. Food Hygiene Ratings API. Published at api.ratings.food.gov.uk. Covers Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) results for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Food Hygiene Information Scheme (FHIS) results for Scotland. Data retrieved 2026-07-23.
- Food Standards Agency. Food hygiene ratings: open data. Published at ratings.food.gov.uk.