Commercial Kitchens · Food Hygiene Rating
Rated 0, 1 or 2? The fix is usually building work, not paperwork.
Most food businesses with a poor rating are sold a deep clean. That treats one of the three scores and leaves the worst one alone. We are builders, so we fix the fabric of the kitchen: the walls, the floor, the drainage and the extract. One contractor, one programme, one accountable party.
Three scores, and only one is about cleaning.
Your rating is not a single judgement. The officer scores you on three separate things, and the important part to understand is that a higher score is worse.
How food is handled, stored, prepared and cooked on the day of the inspection. This is the score a deep clean addresses.
The condition and layout of the premises. Walls, floors, ventilation, drainage, lighting, pest proofing and the state of the fabric. This is building work.
Your records, your systems, and the officer's confidence that you can keep it up after they leave. This is paperwork and training.
Your final rating is driven by whichever of the three is worst. You cannot average a bad structural score away with a spotless kitchen.
Nearly every poor rating has a physical cause.
We analysed all 363 Food Standards Agency local authority datasets in August 2026 and looked at every premises rated 0, 1 or 2 that had published component scores. That is 14,549 businesses.
Our analysis of Food Standards Agency published data, August 2026, n=14,549. These are our findings from open data, not a Food Standards Agency publication.
Structural has the worst median score of the three components, at 15. If your rating is poor, the odds are overwhelming that something physical is driving it.
The clean is not wrong. It is just not the whole job.
A deep clean and an extract clean are worth having. They will help your hygiene score, and if your kitchen is genuinely dirty you need them. But they do nothing at all to the structural score, and on the numbers above the structural score is usually the one holding you down.
A cracked or unsealed wall surface, safety flooring that has lifted at the coving, an open gap where a pipe passes through, a missing wash-hand basin, no hot water at the sink, a grease trap that has never been serviced: none of these get better because the kitchen has been cleaned. They are still there on the re-visit, and they are still being scored.
This is why businesses spend money, get cleaned, get re-visited and find the number has not moved. The work went to the wrong score.
The whole remedy, from one contractor.
We go through the officer's report with you line by line and tell you which items are building work, which are cleaning, and which are yours to fix in your records. In writing, whether or not you use us.
Full clean-down including equipment, behind and under, and the surfaces that never get reached during service.
Canopy, filters, ductwork and fan degreased to the TR19 Grease standard, the recognised industry standard for kitchen extract. Carried out by our accredited delivery partners, who issue the certificate in their own name.
PVC or stainless cladding to walls and splashbacks, sealed at every junction so there is no open seam for grease or water to sit in.
Slip-resistant flooring, welded at the seams and coved up the wall so there is no gap at the floor to wall junction. One of the most commonly scored structural defects.
Dedicated hand wash basins where they are needed, plumbed with hot water at the sink. A standard and frequent finding.
Treatment and, more importantly, proofing: sealing the gaps, holes and service penetrations that let them in. Carried out by our accredited delivery partners.
Grease management and kitchen drainage installed, serviced or upgraded. Routinely scored and routinely ignored.
We help you put the request in and give you the photographs and paperwork showing what was done.
Councils treat structural work differently to paperwork.
This is the part most food businesses do not know, and it is the strongest practical reason to fix the fabric rather than the filing.
Councils apply a standstill period before they will re-visit at all. In Lambeth, for example, that is three months from the statutory inspection, and the re-rating visit carries a fee. But Lambeth's published policy also says this:
“If you were only required to make permanent structural improvements or repairs or to upgrade equipment, we can choose to carry out the requested re-visit sooner than this.”
London Borough of Lambeth, guidance on requesting a food hygiene rating revisit
Permanent building work can be looked at earlier. Changes to your management systems and record keeping cannot, because the officer needs time to see whether the new habits hold.
Every council sets its own policy, fee and timescale, so we will check yours rather than assume. But the principle is common, and it means the route that actually fixes your worst score can also be the faster route back.
We guarantee the work. Nobody can guarantee the rating.
Be careful of anyone who promises you a 5. They cannot deliver it and the promise is worthless. The re-visit is unannounced. The officer scores what they find on the day, including your hygiene practice and your record keeping, which are yours and not ours. A rating can go up, stay the same, or go down.
So here is what we do guarantee.
If the officer identifies a defect at the re-visit that was within the scope of work we carried out, we come back and put it right. No charge, no argument, no debate about whose fault it is.
Payment is against completed work packages, not against a score. A deposit at the trade norm for materials, then staged payments as each package is finished and signed off. We will never hold work or a certificate against a re-inspection outcome.
If your management score is the thing holding you down, we will say so at the survey and tell you that building work will not fix it. We would rather lose the job than take money for the wrong remedy.
The works take about a week. The number takes longer.
The building work in a typical single-kitchen premises takes around a week, phased overnight or on closure days so you keep trading where possible.
The rating is a different clock and it is not ours to control. There is usually a standstill period before you can even request a re-visit, then a fee, then a window in which the council will attend unannounced. Some councils also give you a limited period to pay the fee before the request lapses. Realistically, expect the works in days and the published number to change in months.
We would rather tell you that up front than have you expect a new rating in a fortnight.
Answered
plainly.
Because a clean addresses your hygiene score and most poor ratings are driven by the structural score. A cracked wall surface, lifted coving, an unsealed pipe penetration, a missing wash-hand basin or an unserviced grease trap are all still there after the kitchen has been cleaned, and they are all still being scored.
Hygiene is how food is handled and prepared on the day. Structural is the condition and layout of the premises, so walls, floors, ventilation, drainage, lighting and pest proofing. Confidence in management is your records and systems. A higher score is worse, and your final rating is driven by whichever of the three is worst.
No, and nobody honestly can. The re-visit is unannounced and the officer scores what they find on the day, including your own hygiene practice and record keeping. What we guarantee is the remedy: if the officer identifies a defect that was within the scope of work we carried out, we come back and put it right at no charge.
The building work in a typical single kitchen takes around a week. The rating is a separate clock we do not control. Councils apply a standstill period before a re-visit can be requested, then a fee, then an unannounced visit within a window. Expect the works in days and the published number in months.
No. TR19 Grease is a BESA standard, not legislation. It is the recognised industry standard for cleaning kitchen extract systems, and it is what a competent clean is measured against. Our accredited delivery partners carry out the clean and issue the certificate in their own name.
Rarely, and we would advise against it. Most of this work happens overnight or on closure days so you keep trading where possible. We agree the programme with you before we start.
We will tell you at the survey and we will tell you plainly that building work will not fix it. Roughly one in thirty poor ratings is paperwork only. We would rather lose the job than sell you the wrong remedy.
All 32 London boroughs. Every council sets its own re-visit policy, fee and timescale, so we check yours rather than assume.
Send us the report. We will tell you
what it will take.
A free survey, an honest split of what is building work and what is yours, and a fixed written quote. London-wide.