FOOD HYGIENE INSPECTION CHECKLIST FREE TEMPLATE

How to use the EHO food hygiene inspection checklist?

Maintenance of food hygiene compliance is a must for every food business team. This is a fundamental requirement if you want to keep your business running without any potential hazards to public health. Food safety agencies use regular inspections to determine if food businesses take these regulations seriously. 

Use our EHO food hygiene inspection checklist to ensure that your business is ready for an EHO visit. 

Follow these steps:

1. Familiarise yourself with the chart. Read through the key areas of an EHO inspection. 
2. Download the checklist. Type in our email address and click on "Download." The checklist will automatically be saved in your downloads folder. 
3. Use the checklist on your food business. Conduct an in-house audit and evaluate your food business premises according to EHO standards. 
4. Address all gaps. Analyse the results of the audit and apply corrective actions to each gap. 
5. Use the checklist to re-evaluate your business compliance. 

You can use this free tool to inspect your food business compliance regularly. By regularly conducting audits and inspections, you can ensure that your team is always ready. You can use our wide collection of free tools, checklists, and templates in our Template Hub.

For smarter solutions, you can use FoodDocs' smart Food Safety Management System to get intuitive tools for maintaining food hygiene compliance. 

Learn more in this article below. 

Your Ultimate Guide to Passing EHO Inspection Successfully | Food Hygiene Inspection Checklist Free Template

Food safety agencies conduct regular inspections, whether unannounced or announced, to ensure that food businesses are operating according to food laws. Environmental hygiene inspections, in tandem with well-structured checklists, are the secret ingredients to ensuring the highest level of food safety and hygiene.

Inspections are structured activities that mainly focus on key areas. As such, your food business can create a template for checking your compliance with the standards regularly.

What is an EHO inspection?

An EHO inspection refers to the evaluation process conducted by an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) that focuses on assessing your food hygiene practice and system.

This type of inspection aims to ensure that your food business is compliant with health and safety regulations, particularly in areas related to food safety, hygiene, and environmental health.

During an EHO inspection, the officer evaluates different working aspects of your food business to determine compliance. 

The results of a food hygiene inspection report can have significant implications for businesses, as they may receive recommendations, warnings, improvement notices, or even be temporarily closed down if serious violations are found.

Read more about EHO inspections and how to prepare for them in our detailed article here. 

What is an EHO inspection checklist?

The EHO is not mandated to announce an EHO visit.

As such, your business must be prepared at all times. This system forces businesses to maintain food hygiene regulations compliance every day. 

An EHO (Environmental Health Officer) inspection checklist template, or a food hygiene audit checklist simply, is a comprehensive document used by Environmental Health Officers or Public Health Inspectors during inspections of various establishments to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations.

Health inspections focus on key areas of your establishment. As such, you can create a comprehensive document that covers these key areas to help prepare your team and business. 

What are the key areas of an EHO food hygiene inspection checklist?

An EHO food hygiene inspection checklist consists of several basic and complex points that will be used to assess your business's food hygiene status. 

The main areas of every EHO visit are the following:

• Food handling practices
1. Personal hygiene. Inspection of the personal hygiene practices of food handlers, including hand-washing practices and compliance with food safety regulations like wearing protective clothing, gloves, hairnets, and clean uniforms.
2. Staff training. Evaluation of staff's understanding of food safety practices and their ability to respond to food safety emergencies.
3. Food preparation. Evaluation of food processes, including proper cooking temperatures, recording temperature readings, calibrating food thermometers, and general conditions in food preparation areas. 
4. Food allergen management. Verification of established measures for preventing cross-contact with any ready-to-eat food containing food allergy hazards.
• Food business premises and environment
1. Food establishment. This involves inspecting the completeness of facilities and layout design, such as the presence of separate sinks for handwashing and food preparation and the appropriate type of walls and flooring for food premises. 
2. Food storage. Assessment of how food items are received, stored, and handled. They check for proper storage temperatures for hot and cold foods, labelling, and the prevention of cross - contamination between raw food and cooked food products.
3. Cleaning and sanitation. Evaluation of the cleanliness of food rooms, including storage of cleaning tools and agents, proper use of sanitisers, a cleaning schedule and maintenance of cleaning equipment. 
• Food safety management system
1. Traceability. Inspection of your business's traceability system and efficiency of recording ingredient and product movement. 
2. Established food safety management system. Evaluation of your recordkeeping efficiency and compliance with food safety regulations. 
3. Customer complaint and food recall handling. Assessment of how the establishment handles and resolves customer complaints about food safety and hygiene.

EHOs often use a detailed food hygiene inspection checklist to help them ensure that all key areas and supporting documents are checked during food hygiene checks. Food businesses can use the same EHO checklist format to prepare for an inspection and application of corrective actions. 

Use FoodDocs' smart Food Safety Management System and our smart solutions to cover all EHO inspection key areas and perform in-house audits. Our smart software features automatically generated monitoring tasks that can help your team intuitively record all critical food hygiene tasks. 

Fulfil all food hygiene tasks, including establishing a traceability system, an allergen management plan, a pest control system, and an auditing program with our intelligent Food Safety System. 

What is the importance of an EHO inspection checklist?

An EHO inspection checklist is a useful tool that can help you prepare your business for any inspection while maintaining food hygiene regulation compliance. 

With the help of an EHO food hygiene inspection checklist, you can stay prepared and confident in case of a surprise inspection.

Here are some key reasons why the EHO inspection checklist is important:

• Standardisation. An inspection checklist helps create a standardised framework for your business team to follow and maintain consistency in terms of food hygiene compliance, regardless of an individual food safety officer's approach. 
• Compliance evaluation. Checklists, whether for an inspection or general purpose, can help cover all essential aspects of food safety and hygiene. Using checklists can help evaluate whether your business is compliant and determine areas for improvement. 
• Documentation. The checklist will serve as proof of your regular evaluation and can help facilitate inspections or gap assessments. 
• Training tool. Inspection checklists can be used to train new food employees on which areas to focus on and what EHOs expect to see in an inspection.  
• Preventative measure. Regular inspections and checklists help establishments identify and address issues before they lead to food safety violations or public health incidents.

Food business teams who are acquainted and trained using comprehensive checklists are more likely to secure a 5-star Food Hygiene Rating from an EHO inspector. They are also more likely to be well-informed about the dangers of food safety hazards and the correct food safety procedures to control and minimise risks. 

Who needs an Environmental Health Inspection checklist?

Generally, all food businesses in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia, whether retail, production, or food service, undergo an EHO inspection visit.

As such, all food businesses will benefit from using an Environmental Health Inspection checklist. 

An official visit from the EHO is a legal requirement in the UK. Your businesses may face an inspection visit as a routine activity for legal purposes. 

The purpose of an environmental health inspection checklist is to assist in maintaining food safety, regulatory compliance, and public health. It ensures that establishments adhere to hygiene and safety standards, regardless of their size or type of operation. Using a checklist is a proactive way to prevent foodborne illnesses and health hazards and to provide a safe and healthy experience for customers and the public.

Use our printable EHO inspection checklist to prepare your team for an EHO visit. 

How can FoodDocs help in preparing for an EHO inspection visit?

Achieving high food hygiene scores from an EHO inspection relies on your food safety team's preparedness and your facility's comprehensive food safety management system.

With a robust food safety system firmly in place, surprise visits become a non-issue, as your readiness is constant.

Build your comprehensive food safety management system with the help of our smart Food Safety Software. When you use our smart system, you can get the following features:

1. Smart notification system for reminding food handlers of essential tasks
2. Step-by-step instructions on digital checklists for training food employees
3. Food auditing tools for evaluating your business compliance
4. Real-time dashboard for a more efficient overview of food hygiene status
   
   

Smart notification system for reminding food handlers of essential tasks

Use our digital food safety system's intelligent notification system to reinforce essential food safety responsibilities for all food handlers. This feature is specifically designed to send timely alerts to food handlers for their scheduled tasks.

You can customise reminders for time-sensitive tasks and assign them to individual employees, guaranteeing that each task is completed on time. With this smart feature, you can consistently uphold compliance with critical food hygiene tasks throughout your operations.

In addition, our notification system can also help you estimate when the next EHO inspection will be. By logging the validity date of the last EHO inspection and the food hygiene rating score you got, our system will remind you when the inspection validity is about to end. As these documents near their validity limits, our system automatically sends alerts, prompting you to take action for renewal.

Smart notification system from FoodDocs software

Step-by-step instructions for training food employees

Train your team on critical food hygiene practices with the help of the step-by-step instructions attached to each of our automatically generated digital checklists and monitoring tasks. 

Use this tool to provide thorough food hygiene training, emphasizing key EHO inspection areas to prepare your team for visits. These materials are also suitable for training new food staff and preparing them for EHO inspections.

In addition, our system allows food managers to upload custom task instructions in the form of images or videos.

Food auditing tools for evaluating your business compliance

Our intelligent software includes an audit system that enables you to conduct essential inspections whenever needed.

You can import your existing audit checklists or form new ones using our food safety audit tool and conduct inspections using our food safety app. 

Conduct regular in-house audits and use the information you gather to assess your operations and apply improvements or corrective actions. With the help of this feature, you can make inspection visits more efficient and score a high rating easily. 

Food safety audit tools from FoodDocs software

Real-time dashboard for a more efficient overview of food hygiene status

Keep control of your food hygiene status with the help of our real-time dashboard. This feature gives you an overview of your everyday operations, allowing you to identify whether all food hygiene tasks are done on time or if there are pending ones. 

The dashboard also reflects areas that need more attention, saving you time from manually evaluating each task. Improve your operational efficiency and immediately address any potential problems in your business. With this feature, you can ensure that your business is consistently compliant and ready for an EHO visit. 

Real-time dashboard from FoodDocs software

While EHO inspections can make food business teams nervous, being prepared can remove the inspection jitters and help make everyone confident. With our smart tools and intuitive Food Safety Management System, you can rest easy that your team is well-equipped and trained to comply with food safety laws. 

Learn more about how our smart software can help you score a great rating during an EHO visit by booking a demo with our specialists. 

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