Training and the law
What the law asks of your staff training, and how frunt meets it.
For independent restaurants, pubs and cafés in England. Where this page quotes the law, it quotes it; where it describes frunt, it describes the product as it is today.
What the law asks for
The food hygiene duty comes from Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, retained in UK law. Annex II, Chapter XII says:
Food business operators are to ensure that food handlers are supervised and instructed and/or trained in food hygiene matters commensurate with their work activity.
It never names a certificate. It asks for training that fits each person's job, and you need to be able to show it. Allergens, fire safety, a health and safety induction and, where you sell alcohol, who may sell it come from their own laws, listed below.
Our guide How to train restaurant staff in the UK sets out each duty and where it comes from.
Do staff need a Level 2 certificate?
Not by law. Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene for Catering is the recognised benchmark for anyone handling open food, and many restaurants use it as their evidence of training. It's a general course: it can't teach your dishes, your fryer or your procedures, and supervision and instruction on the job are part of the same duty.
frunt does that second part: training from your own documents, fitted to each role, with a dated record. It works alongside a Level 2 course. When staff arrive with training done elsewhere, you record it in frunt and it shows as exactly that, never as a frunt pass.
Are frunt's courses accredited?
No, and we don't claim they are: no awarding body has accredited them. They're your restaurant's own training, written from your own documents. Where a role needs an accredited qualification, such as a personal licence to sell alcohol, frunt doesn't replace it.
How a frunt course is made
It starts from your document.
A course is written only from a document you've checked and adopted as your restaurant's: your allergen matrix, your food safety procedure, your fire procedure. So it teaches your dishes and your rules, not someone else's.
It names what it relies on.
Each topic is grounded in what UK law and the regulators' guidance require, and each section lists the law and the part of your document it draws on.
Short sections, each with a check.
A course is a few short sections, each followed by a quick check for practice, and a final check that counts.
You read it before your team does.
Nothing reaches your staff until a manager publishes it. frunt does the typing; you do the owning.
It changes when your document does.
Change the document a course came from and the course is brought up to date. Staff who already passed get a short refresher on what changed, not the whole course again.
What an inspector sees
An environmental health officer looks for evidence that the people handling food are trained and supervised for the work they do. frunt keeps it person by person: which course, which version of your document it came from, when they passed and their score, which documents they've read and signed, and training done elsewhere marked as such. You can download it as a PDF to hand over.
Nobody can promise what an inspector will accept, and we don't. What frunt gives you is the record, dated and complete.
What frunt trains on
The topics frunt can write a course on, and the law each one answers to. A restaurant needs only the ones that apply to it: a place that doesn't sell alcohol has no use for the alcohol course.
| Course | Where the duty comes from |
|---|---|
| Food hygiene | Regulation 852/2004 Annex II Ch XII §1 |
| Allergen awareness | Food Information Regulations 2014 + retained Regulation 1169/2011 Annex II (14 named allergens) |
| Natasha's Law (PPDS labelling) | Food Information (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2019 (PPDS full-ingredient + allergen labelling) |
| HACCP / SFBB awareness | Regulation 852/2004 Art 5 + Annex II Ch XII §2 (HACCP-based permanent procedure) |
| Health & safety induction | Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 s.2(2)(c) + Management Regs 1999 reg 13 |
| Fire safety awareness | Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 Art 21 (training of employees) |
| COSHH / chemical safety | Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 reg 12 (information, instruction, training) |
| Manual handling | Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 reg 4 (avoid / assess / reduce risk) |
| Anti-harassment & dignity at work | Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 |
| Responsible alcohol service (Challenge 25) | Licensing Act 2003 s.19 |
| Data protection awareness | ICO accountability expectation |
Keeping up with the law
Every week, frunt checks the regulator pages and legislation its guides and course topics quote against the copy we last checked. When one changes, a person reviews it and updates what it affects. Each of our guides shows the date it was last checked against the law.