In July 2024 we revealed that one in five restaurants and takeaways had not been seen by food inspectors for more than two years.
Methodology
We used Food Standards Agency (FSA) open data on the food hygiene ratings and status of every establishment in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland at .
We downloaded data from every local authority as of April 10 2024. This was filtered to establishments in four categories: Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen; Pub/bar/nightclub; Takeaway/sandwich shop; and Mobile caterer (see notebooks below).
The data was cleaned to remove a small percentage (<1%) of duplicate entries: where an establishment with the same name and latitude, or the same name and postcode, appeared more than once in the same authority’s data, the row with the most recent inspection date was retained and the other removed.
Each establishment was classified to determine whether it had been inspected since January 1 2022 (i.e. within the last two years and three months) or not, or whether it was still awaiting inspection.
A second set of data was downloaded on April 25 focusing on wholesale outlets. This was filtered to establishments in three categories: Manufacturers/packers; Importers/Exporters; and Distributors/Transporters.
Note: some establishments will have since been inspected, added, or removed since the data was compiled.
Get the data
- (generated from IDs)
The ratings data for other establishments is too big to host on GitHub.
Code
Scripts were written in Python to loop through and download the data files for each local authority, filter and analyse. OpenRefine was also used to identify potential duplication in the FSA dataset - the steps have been exported as a JSON file.
- Python notebook:
- Python notebook:
- JSON: - an
Partner usage
- Andover Advertiser:
- Banbury FM:
- BelfastLive:
- Belfast Telegraph:
- Birmingham Live:
- Bristol Live:
- Cambrian Live:
- Grimsby Telegraph:
- Hull Daily Mail:
- iNews:
- Leicestershire Live:
- Kent Online:
- KL1 Radio:
- Lincs Online:
- Lincolnshire Echo:
- MyLocal Lincolnshire:
- The Lincolnite:
- 成人快手 Lincolnshire: Councils among worst for food hygiene inspections
- Lincolnshire Live:
- Lynn News:
- The Mirror:
- Southampton Daily Echo: