Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013: What They Actually Require

If you have ever wondered what sits behind the hygiene sticker in a shop window, or what an environmental health officer is actually checking against, a good deal of the answer in England is a single statutory instrument made in 2013. It is not the whole of food law, and it is the piece that most often carries the enforcement.

The regulations themselves are readable, if dry. What they do not do is set out every rule about how to run a kitchen. Their main function is to give domestic effect and enforcement teeth to a body of hygiene requirements that sit elsewhere, and to define what happens when those requirements are not met.

What the Regulations Are

They are secondary legislation, laid before Parliament and made in 2013, applying to England. The full text is published on legislation.gov.uk, which is the authoritative source and worth using in preference to any summary, including this one, when something turns on the precise wording.

They Sit on Top of Retained Hygiene Rules

The detailed hygiene obligations for food businesses derive from a set of regulations originally made at EU level and retained in UK law after exit. The 2013 regulations provide the enforcement framework in England: who enforces, what powers they have, and what offences exist.

Devolution Matters Here

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own equivalent instruments. The substance is broadly similar and the detail differs, particularly around the hygiene rating scheme. A business operating across the UK cannot assume the English position applies everywhere.

Who Counts as a Food Business

The definition is wider than most people expect. Restaurants, takeaways and shops obviously qualify, and so do childminders providing meals, market stalls, mobile vans, home bakers selling regularly, care homes, schools and pubs. Whether money changes hands is not the only test; regularity and organisation matter.

Registration With the Local Authority

Food businesses must register with their local authority, generally at least 28 days before trading. Registration is free and cannot be refused. Many small operators, particularly home bakers and market traders, do not realise this applies to them.

HACCP Is the Central Obligation

Businesses must put in place procedures based on hazard analysis and critical control point principles. In plain terms: identify what could go wrong, decide where you can control it, set limits, monitor them, and record what you did. It is a system of thinking rather than a form to fill in.

Safer Food, Better Business

For smaller caterers and retailers, the Food Standards Agency publishes a simplified pack that satisfies the requirement without a full technical HACCP study. It is free, widely used, and what most inspectors expect to see in a small kitchen.

Temperature Control

Chilled food must generally be held at or below 8 degrees Celsius, and hot food at or above 63 degrees, with defined exceptions for service periods. These figures are among the few specific numbers people remember, and they are checked routinely on inspection.

Structure, Cleaning and Pest Control

Premises must be kept clean, in good repair, and designed so that hygienic practice is possible: adequate handwashing facilities, suitable surfaces, proper waste handling and effective pest control. A great deal of enforcement activity concerns physical condition rather than food handling as such.

Training and Supervision

Food handlers must be supervised and instructed or trained in food hygiene to a level appropriate to their work. There is no single mandatory qualification in law, though Level 2 certificates are the practical standard and inspectors expect evidence of some structured training.

Traceability and Withdrawal

Businesses must be able to identify who supplied them and, where applicable, who they supplied. Where food is unsafe and has left their control, they must withdraw or recall it and inform the authorities. Keeping delivery records is what makes this possible.

Allergen Rules Are Separate

Allergen information requirements come from food information legislation rather than the hygiene regulations, including the labelling rules for food prepacked for direct sale introduced in 2021. They are frequently discussed together and are legally distinct.

Enforcement Powers

Authorised officers can enter premises, inspect, take samples, and serve improvement notices requiring specific remedial action. In serious cases they can serve a hygiene emergency prohibition notice, which closes premises immediately pending a court decision.

Offences and Penalties

Failing to comply with an improvement notice, obstructing an officer, or breaching hygiene requirements are all offences. Penalties range from fines to imprisonment in the most serious cases, and courts can prohibit individuals from managing food businesses.

How It Connects to the Rating on the Door

Inspection under these rules is what generates the score used by the food hygiene rating scheme. The rating is not itself a legal requirement of the 2013 regulations, and it is derived from the same inspection, which is why the two are so often confused.

What It Means for Home Cooks

None of this applies to cooking for your own household. The underlying principles still translate usefully: separate raw and ready-to-eat food, control temperature, wash hands, and take particular care with higher-risk ingredients such as preparing offal such as gizzards. Even routine kitchen tasks like disposing of kitchen knives safely sit in the same broad category of doing things properly.

Water Supply and Waste

Premises need an adequate supply of potable water and proper arrangements for waste, both food waste and general refuse. Bins accessible to pests, or waste stored where deliveries arrive, are recurring findings on inspection reports.

If You Are Starting a Food Business

Register early, download the free pack, write down what you do, keep the records, and speak to your environmental health team before opening rather than after. Officers are generally far more helpful in advance than they can be during an inspection.

This is a general explanation, not legal advice. Food law changes, enforcement is carried out locally, and the requirements that apply to a particular business depend on what it does. Anyone running a food business should check current guidance and speak to their local authority environmental health team rather than rely on a summary.