🍴 UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper

🚀 Export the official UK Food Hygiene Rating Scheme in seconds. Filter 500,000+ inspected establishments across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland by name, local authority, business type, or rating. No API key, no registration, no manual CSV wrangling.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-22 · 📊 23 fields per record · 🍽️ 500,000+ premises · 🇬🇧 411 local authorities · ⭐ 0-5 rating bands

The UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper exports the Food Standards Agency's national hygiene register and returns 23 structured fields per record, including the business identifier, type, address, postcode, latitude/longitude, three component scores, the headline rating, and the issuing local authority's contact details. The underlying register is the official UK regulatory record used by environmental health officers, delivery platforms, and consumer journalists.

The catalog covers every inspected food business in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, across 411 local authorities and dozens of business categories from restaurants and takeaways to schools, hospitals, mobile caterers, manufacturers, and importers. This Actor delivers the data as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in under five minutes.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Food-delivery marketplaces, consumer journalists, local-government analysts, restaurant intelligence teams, public-health researchers, insurance underwriters	Marketplace eligibility screens, "score on the door" widgets, investigative reporting, council-by-council compliance dashboards, restaurant-risk underwriting

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📋 What the UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper does

Five filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🏪 Business name filter. Free-text partial match (e.g. Tesco, KFC, Pizza Express).
• 🏛️ Local authority filter. 411 council options, from Aberdeen to York.
• 🍽️ Business type filter. Restaurants, takeaways, schools, hospitals, manufacturers, retailers, mobile caterers, and more.
• ⭐ Rating filter. Pull only 5-star sites, or only 0/1-star problem premises.
• 🌐 Multi-filter compound queries. Combine name + council + rating to drill in.

Each record includes FHRS ID, business name and type, headline rating, three component scores (hygiene, structural, management confidence), last-inspection date, address, postcode, lat/lon, scheme type (FHRS for England/Wales/NI, FHIS for Scotland), the new-rating-pending flag, the right-to-reply text, and the issuing local authority's name, code, email, and website.

💡 Why it matters: food hygiene scores drive consumer trust, marketplace listings, insurance premiums, and local government enforcement. Building your own pipeline means handling pagination across 411 councils, two parallel scheme types (FHRS vs FHIS), and field naming drift. This Actor skips all of that.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
name	string	""	Business name. Partial match supported by the source.
localAuthorityId	string	"any"	411 council enum (e.g. 197 for Birmingham, 238 for Cardiff).
businessTypeId	string	"any"	Restaurant, takeaway, school, hospital, manufacturer, retailer, mobile caterer, etc.
ratingValue	string	"any"	FHRS 0-5, plus FHIS "Pass", "Improvement Required", "Awaiting Inspection".

Example: every Tesco store in the country.

{
    "maxItems": 1000,
    "name": "Tesco"
}

Example: 1-star takeaways in Birmingham.

{
    "maxItems": 200,
    "name": "",
    "localAuthorityId": "197",
    "businessTypeId": "7843",
    "ratingValue": "1"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: the headline rating (ratingValue) reflects the most recent inspection. The new-rating-pending flag tells you when a re-score is in the pipeline. Scottish premises use the FHIS scheme (Pass / Improvement Required), not the 0-5 FHRS scale; the schemeType field disambiguates.

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📊 Output

Each premises record contains 23 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 fhrsId	number	1234567
🏪 businessName	string	"The Pizza Place"
🍽️ businessType	string	"Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen"
🏷️ businessTypeId	number	1
⭐ ratingValue	string	"5"
🔑 ratingKey	string	"fhrs_5_en-gb"
📋 schemeType	string	"FHRS"
📅 ratingDate	string	"2024-08-15"
📍 address	string	"12 High Street, Manchester"
📮 postCode	string	"M1 4AB"
📍 latitude	number | null	53.4808
📍 longitude	number | null	-2.2426
🧼 hygieneScore	number | null	0
🏗️ structuralScore	number | null	0
🛡️ confidenceInManagementScore	number | null	0
⏳ newRatingPending	boolean	false
💬 rightToReply	string | null	""
🏛️ localAuthorityName	string	"Manchester"
🏷️ localAuthorityCode	string	"335"
✉️ localAuthorityEmail	string | null	"foodsafety@manchester.gov.uk"
🌐 localAuthorityWebsite	string | null	"https://www.manchester.gov.uk"
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-22T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🇬🇧	Nationwide coverage. Every inspected food business in the UK, across 411 councils.
⭐	Headline + component scores. Rating, hygiene, structural, and management confidence in one row.
🗺️	Geocoded. Latitude and longitude on the majority of premises for direct map plotting.
⚡	Fast. 10 records in under 5 seconds, 10,000 records in roughly a minute.
🏛️	Council contact info. Email and website of the responsible authority for follow-up.
🔁	Always fresh. Every run pulls the latest published register.
🚫	No authentication. Public open government data, no token required.

📊 Accurate food hygiene scores power every delivery marketplace eligibility check, council enforcement dashboard, and consumer trust badge in the UK.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	500,000+ premises	Live per run	name, council, type, rating	⚡ 2 min
Manual FSA portal browsing	Free	Single-record only	Live	UI filters	🐢 Hours
Commercial food-safety data feeds	$5,000+/year	Multi-source	Daily	Many	⏳ Weeks
Council "score on the door" stickers	Free	One premises	Per visit	None	🕒 Manual

Pick this Actor when you want filterable bulk export with geocodes and council contact info.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a council, business type, or rating threshold, and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

🛵 Food Delivery Marketplaces Onboarding eligibility checks ("must be 3-star or better") "Hygiene rating" badge on restaurant tiles Council-level dashboards for rider managers Watchlists for premises that drop to 0 or 1 star	📰 Consumer Journalism League tables of worst-rated chains Investigative pieces on council enforcement gaps Interactive map widgets for online stories Hyperlocal "your area's worst" features
🏛️ Local Government Cross-authority benchmarking dashboards Re-inspection backlog visibility Public-facing open-data portals Right-to-reply backlog tracking	🏢 Restaurant Intelligence Competitor hygiene benchmarking Multi-site brand quality monitoring Pre-acquisition due diligence on chains Underwriting inputs for restaurant insurance

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🔌 Automating UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Weekly refreshes keep downstream eligibility caches in sync automatically.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Public-health studies of inspection outcomes Urban-geography theses on food-desert overlays Policy reviews of UK food regulation Open-data exercises with real government datasets	🎨 Personal and creative Hobbyist "what's safe near me?" map mashups Foodie travel-planning spreadsheets Side-project apps for local communities Portfolio data-viz demos
🤝 Non-profit and civic Consumer-advocacy reports on food safety Tenant-and-residents-association watchlists Civic transparency dashboards Open contributions to OpenStreetMap food-venue tagging	🧪 Experimentation Train rating-prediction ML toy models Validate restaurant-discovery product hypotheses Prototype agent pipelines that monitor a portfolio Test dashboard concepts with real public data

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a council, business type, or rating filter, click Start, and the Actor pulls premises records from the Food Standards Agency's national register. No browser automation, no captchas, no setup.

📏 How fresh is the data?

The register updates as councils submit new inspections (typically daily). Every run of this Actor fetches the latest published data.

🔁 Does it cover Scotland?

Yes. Scotland uses the parallel FHIS scheme (Pass / Improvement Required / Awaiting Inspection) instead of 0-5 stars. The schemeType field tells you which scale a record uses.

🗺️ Are lat/lon coordinates always present?

Most records have coordinates. A small minority (typically mobile caterers, temporary premises, or recently added sites) ship without them.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval and keep a downstream eligibility cache in sync.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

Yes. The register is published as UK open government data under the Open Government Licence.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Yes. Open Government Licence terms permit commercial use with attribution.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and enables scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails?

Apify retries transient errors automatically. Inspect the log in the Runs tab, adjust the input, and re-run. Partial datasets are preserved.

🍽️ How do business type IDs work?

The source assigns numeric IDs to each business category. Common ones: 1 Restaurant/Cafe, 7843 Takeaway, 7838 Mobile Caterer, 4613 Manufacturer/Packer. The schema enumerates them all.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

UK Food Hygiene Ratings Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get rating-drop alerts in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe hygiene data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh hygiene scores into your marketplace backend, or alert your team in Slack when a brand drops below 3 stars.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the UK Food Standards Agency, any local authority, or any rated business. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available UK Open Government Licence data is collected.