Food safety management for restaurants: HACCP and SFBB explained (UK)

Food safety is the one area of restaurant compliance with a clear, unambiguous legal duty: you must have a written, working management system. This guide explains what that system has to be, the free FSA tool that satisfies it for most restaurants, and the records that turn "we're careful" into something an inspector accepts.

What does UK law require for restaurant food safety?

The core duty is in retained EU Regulation 852/2004. Article 5 requires every food business to put in place and maintain a permanent procedure based on HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) principles:

Food business operators shall put in place, implement and maintain a permanent procedure or procedures based on the HACCP principles.

Crucially, it must be "appropriate to the size and nature of the business" — a 25-cover independent doesn't need the HACCP plan of a factory. Sitting underneath this is the Food Safety Act 1990, which makes it an offence to sell unsafe food and gives you a "due diligence" defence if you can prove you took all reasonable precautions. That defence lives or dies on your records.

What is Safer Food, Better Business — and do I have to use it?

You don't have to use SFBB specifically, but for most restaurants it's the easiest way to comply. Safer Food, Better Business is the FSA's free pack for small caterers, built around safe methods for the 4 Cs:

• Cross-contamination — separating raw and ready-to-eat food, personal hygiene, cloths, pest control.
• Cleaning — handwashing, your cleaning schedule, and "clean as you go".
• Chilling — chilled storage, cooling hot food, defrosting and freezing.
• Cooking — safe cooking and reheating temperatures, hot holding, and foods that need extra care.

It adds a management section (opening/closing checks, training, supplier oversight, allergen management) and a daily diary for your records. In Scotland the equivalent is CookSafe; Northern Ireland uses Safe Catering. One important caveat: the FSA updates the SFBB pack without a public changelog, so it's worth re-checking the live version periodically.

Do I have to register my food business?

Yes — and it's free and easy to miss. You must register with your local authority at least 28 days before opening. Registration can't be refused, and it's what schedules the inspection behind your Food Hygiene Rating. Display of that rating is voluntary in England but mandatory in Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland runs a separate Food Hygiene Information Scheme).

The cleaning schedule and COSHH sit inside the system

Two documents that managers often treat as separate are really part of your food safety system:

• A documented cleaning schedule is required under Regulation 852/2004 — what gets cleaned, how often, with which product, by whom, signed off. No regulator publishes a definitive frequency table, so it's driven by your equipment and usage.
• A COSHH assessment (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002) covers your cleaning chemicals and sanitisers — recording each product's hazards, the controls, the PPE and what to do if someone is exposed.

What records does an inspector actually want?

The legal phrase that matters is "prove it". Your system has to be evidenced, not just written. In practice that means current records of: opening and closing checks; fridge, freezer, cooking and cooling temperatures; cleaning sign-offs; deliveries and supplier checks; and staff training. The SFBB diary is designed to hold most of this — its value is entirely in how up to date it is.

Keeping the system live, not just written

The hard part of food safety management isn't writing the system — it's keeping it alive: the diary filled in, the team trained on the current safe methods, the proof retrievable when an EHO walks in. That's the gap frunt is built to close.

frunt turns your food-safety documents into training the team completes on their phones and keeps a dated, versioned record of who's current — so when a method changes, the matching training is flagged, and the audit trail an inspector asks for is already written. Get started with frunt, or book a walkthrough.