UK Food Business Leads: FSA Hygiene Ratings + Companies House

Find restaurants, cafés, takeaways, pubs, hotels and food shops in any UK council or postcode district, straight from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) food hygiene rating data, and see which limited company is behind each one from Companies House.

Use it to:

• Spot new openings. Businesses "awaiting inspection" have registered with the council but not yet had their first hygiene visit – usually a new opening or a new owner. The monitor mode gives you fresh ones every week.
• Find businesses that need help. Filter for ratings 0–2 if you sell food safety training, cleaning, pest control or consultancy.
• Build a compliant B2B list. Each row says whether the business is confidently matched to an active limited company, plc or LLP (pecrCorporateSubscriber), so you can keep sole traders out of email campaigns.

Official open data only. No Google Maps, no scraping, no personal contact details.

What you get (one row per food business)

Field	Example
businessName, businessType	Horus Charcoal Grill, Restaurant/Cafe/Canteen
address, postcode, localAuthority	9-11 Cannon Street, Bedminster, Bristol, BS3 1BH, Bristol
rating, ratingDate	AwaitingInspection (no date yet), or 0–5 with the inspection date
awaitingFirstInspection	true = registered but not yet inspected
hygieneScore, structuralScore, managementScore	FSA inspection scores (lower is better)
latitude, longitude	where published
companyName, companyNumber, companyType, incorporatedOn	HORUS CHARCOAL GRILL LTD, 17458729, ltd, 2026-09-14
companyMatch	high (same name, same postcode), medium (same name, same area), possible, none
possibleCompanyName / Number	same name elsewhere in the UK – a hint only, never counted as the match
pecrCorporateSubscriber	true only for a high/medium match to an active limited company, plc or LLP
fsaUrl, companiesHouseUrl	links to the official pages

Results come newest registrations first (by FSA ID).

How to use it

Quick search: enter a council (e.g. Leeds, Westminster, Glasgow City) or postcode districts (BS1, M4), pick business types and press Start. The default (Bristol restaurants and takeaways, 50 rows) finishes in about 30 seconds.

New openings monitor: set Mode to New openings monitor and schedule it weekly.

• First run: saves a snapshot and returns everything awaiting its first inspection.
• Later runs: only new-listing, rating-changed (with previousRating) and removed rows.
• Changing your filters starts a new snapshot.

Only limited companies: switch this on to return only businesses confidently matched to an active company. The actor keeps looking up businesses until it has your Max results (up to 15 lookups per wanted row, so very narrow searches may return fewer).

Pricing

$0.003 per food business returned (pay per event), including the Companies House lookup. 1,000 leads cost $3. You can cap spending in the run options. A monitor run with no changes costs nothing.

How the company match works

The FSA lists trading names; Companies House lists registered names. We search Companies House for each business name and only accept an active company whose name is identical once "Ltd", "Limited", punctuation and "&/and" are normalised:

• high – the registered office has the same postcode as the premises;
• medium – same postcode district or area;
• possible – one company with that name, registered somewhere else (often a chain head office or an unrelated firm). Shown separately for you to check.

Many small food businesses trade under a different name from their company, or are sole traders, so in our tests 15–40% of rows matched. We would rather leave a field empty than guess.

Using the data lawfully (UK GDPR and PECR)

• Email marketing: under PECR you may send B2B marketing emails to corporate subscribers (limited companies, plcs, LLPs) at their business addresses, with a clear opt-out in every message. Sole traders and ordinary partnerships count as individuals and need prior consent. Use pecrCorporateSubscriber = true as your starting filter, and still check each company yourself.
• Personal data: this actor returns no names of people, phone numbers or personal emails. Businesses run from a private home (address withheld by the FSA) are skipped by default.
• You are the controller of any list you build. Have a legitimate interest assessment, tell people where you got their details, honour objections, and screen against the TPS/CTPS before calling.
• Showing ratings publicly: showing a rating does not imply FSA endorsement, and ratings change. Check the live FSA page before you publish a rating, and do not use FSA rating images except under the FSA Brand Standard.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Data sources and licence

• Food hygiene ratings: Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme API (England, Wales, Northern Ireland) and Food Hygiene Information Scheme (Scotland). Open Government Licence v3.0. Updated daily by local authorities.
• Company data: Companies House Public Data API. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Every row carries an attribution field. Keep it when you share the data.

FAQ

Is "awaiting inspection" always a new business? Usually it is a newly registered business or a change of owner. Some have been waiting for a while, as councils have inspection backlogs.

Why no phone numbers or websites? The FSA does not publish them, and we don't scrape Google or websites. Use the company number to find more on Companies House.

Does it cover Scotland? Yes. Scottish councils use Pass / Improvement Required instead of 0–5.

Can I use my own Companies House key? Yes, add it in the input (stored as a secret). Otherwise the built-in key is used.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.