The scores are on the doors, but are they right?
- Andy Lynes 2
In the late 70’s, “the scores on the doors” decided if a contestant on the BBC’s Generation Game TV show got their moment of glory behind the famous conveyor belt filled with electric teasmades, fondue sets and cuddly toys. These days however, if you’re a restaurateur, or a restaurant customer for that matter, it means something far more serious.
The Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) Scores On The Doors scheme not only inspects and rates food businesses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on their food hygiene (there’s a similar but separate scheme in Scotland called the Food Hygiene Information Scheme), but publishes its findings on the net. That means anyone can see how clean your business is at the click of a button.
An analysis of the currents scores for restaurants (the scheme also covers any business where food is handled or prepared from convalescent homes to the local butcher) in my hometown of Brighton and Hove revealed a mixed bag of results.
While 24 of the 246 establishments listed (approximately 10 per cent) had been awarded a maximum five out of five stars indicating “very high standards of compliance with food safety legislation”, a worrying 18 restaurants (just over 7 per cent ) were deemed to be “poor” and merited only one star, meaning there was “some non-compliance with food safety legislation. More effort required.”
Just one restaurant failed to gain any stars; step forward the hugely popular Italian eaterie Otello whose many customers will be less than delighted to learn that there is “a general failure to comply with legal requirements” and “little or no appreciation of food safety” at their favourite local trattoria.
Ease of access to the information has triggered several data crunching news stories. “Exposed: the hygiene scandal on the high street” was the 14 June edition of The Independent’s cover story which reported that eight out of the twenty three Yo! Sushi restaurants included in the newspapers sample received two stars (“broadly compliant with food safety legislation”) or less.
On 20 June, the BBC’s news website reported that in Northern Ireland the “Scores scheme leaves red-faced chefs”, with celebrity chef Paul Rankin’s cafe in Belfast’s Castle Court shopping mall being singled out for winning just one star, putting it in the same bracket as The Alexandra Bar on the city’s “run down” York Road.
Although the scheme looks set to help drive up standards of hygiene in the industry and, in the words of Dame Deirdre Hutton, Chair of the FSA “empower consumers to make informed choices about the food they eat”, there appears to be some concern amongst restaurateurs about how the scheme is operated.
In a statement to the press, Yo! Sushi said that they “have concerns about the consistency of the inspections and in particular how quickly the scores are updated after the inspection has been carried out”, while a spokesman for Paul Rankin told the BBC that the café’s low score was due to “refrigeration and hot water problems that the cafe was experiencing at the time of the inspection," and that “immediate action to fix all the refrigeration units and install an extra boiler” had been taken.
In addition, today’s edition of the Wokingham Times quotes chef Alan Murchison as saying that the scheme “isn’t worth the paper it is written on”, despite the fact that his Michelin starred L’ortolan restaurant in Shinfield has been awarded a more than respectable three out of five stars. It was a point of view backed up by other local restaurateurs who claimed that some inspections reflected in the current ratings had taken place two years ago.
So does the Scores On The Doors scheme accurately reflect the current level of hygiene across the hospitality industry? Would you be happy for your score to be posted on the internet for the world to see, or do local councils need to ensure their inspections are more frequent and up to date before they go public with their findings?
Click the “Add a Comment” link below and let us know what you think.
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Comments (2)
“Why is my restaurant, where the chefs work 16 hours a day and produce top quality food, classed the same as the school, where unskilled staff have a tiny area, and the Esso Garage, where they heat up frozen pies?" says a disgruntled Alan Murchison, Head Chef of L'Otolan, the only Michelin starred restarant in the borough of Wokingham.
“It’s not worth the paper it is written on.”
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