Food hygiene rating display law in Wales (and Northern Ireland)

Walk down a high street in Cardiff, Swansea or Belfast and you'll see the green and black food hygiene stickers on café, pub and takeaway doors. That's because in Wales and Northern Ireland, displaying your rating is the law. In England it's voluntary, and Scotland runs a different scheme altogether.

This guide covers exactly what the display law requires, the penalties, the rules for takeaway menus and phone orders, and how to keep your rating where you want it.

The rules at a glance

Wales: what the law requires

1. Display the sticker at every customer entrance

Under section 7 of the Food Hygiene Rating (Wales) Act 2013, once you've been notified of your rating you must display the sticker the council provides. The FSA's guidance for businesses says the sticker must go in a visible place at or near each customer entrance, where customers can easily read it.

In practice:

• More than one entrance? You need a sticker at each one customers use: the front door, the beer-garden gate, the side door from the car park.
• Put it where people look: on the door glass or a front window at eye level, not behind a menu board or a pile of leaflets.
• Ask for spares if you need more stickers than you were given.

2. When the duty starts and ends

• The duty starts once the 21-day appeal period has passed, or, if you appeal, once the appeal has been decided and you've been told the outcome.
• A sticker stops being valid when the rating stops being valid, for example when you get a new rating. You must then remove and destroy the old sticker. Leaving an out-of-date 5 in the window when you've since been rated a 3 is an offence in itself.

3. Tell customers your rating if they ask

Section 8 of the Act says the operator and relevant staff must tell anyone who asks what the rating is, verbally. The FSA confirms this covers requests in person and over the phone. The operator must also make sure every member of staff who's likely to be asked knows the rating.

Refusing to tell someone, or giving false or misleading information about your rating, is an offence under section 9 of the Act. That means your weekend bar staff and whoever answers the phone for takeaway orders need to know it. Add it to your induction and pin it by the phone.

4. Takeaway menus and leaflets

If you supply takeaway food directly to customers and you have a menu or leaflet showing food for sale, prices and a way to order without visiting (a phone number, for example), you must publish a bilingual statement on it directing customers to the food hygiene ratings website. The statement also reminds customers they have a legal right to ask for your rating when they order.

This applies to printed takeaway menus and leaflets delivered through doors. If you're reprinting menus, check the statement is on them. Your council's food team can give you the approved wording.

5. Penalties in Wales

Failing to display a valid sticker in the prescribed place, or displaying an invalid one, is an offence under section 9 of the Act. So is tampering with or defacing the sticker. The council can offer a fixed penalty notice:

• £200, payable within 28 days of the notice
• reduced to £150 if paid within 14 days

If you don't pay, you can be prosecuted. Paying the penalty doesn't end the matter: you still have to put a valid sticker up.

Northern Ireland: what the law requires

Northern Ireland's Food Hygiene Rating Act 2016 works in a similar way.

• Display: you must display your rating at or near each customer entrance.
• Tell customers: the operator or a relevant employee must tell anyone who asks the rating, orally, in person or by phone.
• Fixed penalty: £200 for failing to display a valid sticker or displaying an invalid one, set by the Food Hygiene Rating (Fee and Fixed Penalty Amount) Order (Northern Ireland) 2016. The Act gives 28 days to pay, with a 25% reduction if paid within the first 14 days where the notice provides for it.
• Re-rating fee: the same 2016 Order set a fee of £150 to apply for a re-rating. Check with your council for the current fee.
• Early publication: unlike England and Wales, you can't ask for early publication of your rating in Northern Ireland.

England: voluntary, but worth doing

In England there's no legal duty to display your rating. The FSA's guidance says you can display it in your window or door, and encourages you to show it on your website and social media too, with downloadable images.

If you've got a 4 or 5, display it. A blank window invites customers to look you up anyway, because ratings are published online.

Scotland: a different scheme

Scotland uses the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, with Pass or Improvement Required instead of 0 to 5. Businesses get a certificate and/or sticker, but as of October 2026 we found no legal requirement to display it. Our FHIS guide covers how it works.

Unhappy with your rating? Appeal, reply or re-rate

These safeguards apply in Wales and Northern Ireland (and England), according to the FSA's guidance for businesses:

• Appeal in writing within 21 days of being notified. In Wales you must use a standard form. Someone other than the officer who rated you considers it, and you'll hear the outcome within 21 days. While it's pending the rating shows as "awaiting publication", and in Wales the duty to display waits until the appeal is decided.
• Right to reply: a short written response published alongside your rating, any time up to your next inspection.
• Re-rating inspection: once you've accepted the rating and made the improvements. In Wales and Northern Ireland there's no limit on the number of requests, but any appeal must be resolved first, you must be displaying your current sticker, and you must allow access. The visit is made within three months of your written request.

Note that last point: in Wales and Northern Ireland, taking your sticker down because you don't like the score can block a re-rating as well as earn a fixed penalty.

Ratings of 0 to 4 are published three to five weeks after the inspection, to allow time for an appeal. Our guide on how to get a 5-star food hygiene rating explains how the score is worked out.

Display checklist for Welsh and Northern Irish venues

• Current sticker displayed at every customer entrance
• Sticker visible and readable from outside, not hidden behind other notices
• Old stickers removed and destroyed when a new rating takes effect
• All staff who serve customers or answer the phone know the current rating
• Rating added to the phone order script and staff induction
• (Wales) Bilingual statement on takeaway menus and leaflets
• Spare stickers requested from the council if needed
• Date of the last inspection and rating noted in your records

How ShiftComplete helps

ShiftComplete is an operations and rota app for UK pubs, restaurants, cafés, bars and hotels. It isn't approved or endorsed by the FSA or any council, and it can't promise you a rating, but it helps you keep the records an inspector asks to see:

• Temperature logs for every fridge, freezer and hot-hold point, with out-of-range readings flagged and a 7-day rolling view for inspections.
• Opening, closing and cleaning checklists that change by weekday, every tick named and timestamped, with photo evidence if you want it. Add "sticker on both doors" to the opening checks.
• Allergens mapped to the 14 UK allergens, searchable from the floor.
• Team announcements so every member of staff knows the new rating the day it arrives.
• Incident and maintenance logs with photos, ready to show at a re-rating visit.

£1.49 per staff member per month, free for 60 days, no card needed.