What Environmental Health Inspectors Actually Check

How the inspection works

Environmental Health officers can visit at any time without notice. Most inspections follow the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, scoring your business on three areas:

1. Hygienic food handling — How you prepare, cook, reheat, cool, and store food.
2. Cleanliness and condition of facilities — The physical state of your kitchen, equipment, and toilets.
3. Management of food safety — Your HACCP plan, food safety management system, training records, and monitoring.

Each area is scored 0-25 (0 is best). Your scores are converted to a rating from 0 (urgent improvement necessary) to 5 (very good).

The documents they check

Officers will ask to see:

• Your HACCP plan — this is the first thing most officers look for.
• Temperature monitoring logs — they'll check today's entries and look back through previous weeks.
• Cleaning schedule with completed, signed records.
• Staff food hygiene training records — who's trained, to what level, when.
• Allergen management plan and menu allergen matrix.
• Supplier due diligence — especially if they have concerns about a product.
• Pest control records — contractor visits and any sighting logs.

Confidence in management

The third scoring area — management of food safety — is where most restaurants lose points. Officers assess whether you have:

• A documented food safety management system
• A HACCP plan that's specific to YOUR operation (not a generic template)
• Evidence of ongoing monitoring (completed logs, not blank forms)
• Staff training records
• A track record of compliance (previous inspection history)

This is where DocketPack makes the biggest difference. Having all 52 documents in place, customised to your business, demonstrates the level of management that scores highest on this criteria.

How to prepare

You can't predict when an inspection will happen, which means you need to be ready at all times:

1. Keep all documents in one accessible folder (physical or digital)
2. Complete your monitoring logs daily — don't backfill them
3. Ensure all staff know where documents are kept
4. Review and update documents when anything changes
5. Conduct your own mock inspections quarterly