# About approval-number — what this site is and is not

> Where the data comes from, how the history was rebuilt, and what it cannot tell you.

## About this site

A search layer over a public register, plus a history reconstructed from the publisher's own snapshots.

### The source

Everything here comes from the Food Standards Agency's
 Approved Food Establishments 
dataset, published under
 Open Government Licence
v3.0 . The catalogue holds **104 monthly snapshots**; 102 could
be dated and downloaded, and **78** are used for the history.

### How the history was rebuilt, and where it stops

An establishment is treated as present in a month if its approval number
appears in that month's snapshot. Its first and last appearances give the span.
That is all the data supports.

- **The series starts in January 2020**, because the numbering
changed. Before that, numbers were local (`AR 001`); after, national
(`1000`). Matching across the break would invent a closure for every
renumbered establishment.
- **August and November 2024 are missing** from the catalogue.
A departure in one of those months is dated to the next published month.
- **April 2022 is a scope change, not an event.** 1,122
establishments — 797 Scottish, 325 Northern Irish — leave the file that month
and none returns. They are flagged and excluded from departure counts.

### ⚠️ What this site will not say

- **“Approval withdrawn.”** The file records
absence, not reason. 2,846 establishments have stopped appearing since
2020; we say when, and nothing about why.
- **“Not approved.”** Absence from this file is not
evidence: it covers England and Wales plus the Crown Dependencies, and never
covered establishments abroad.
- **Where 1,019 establishments are.** The source marks
their address as withheld and we honour that everywhere, including in the
search index.

### What this site is not

- **Not the official register.** For anything that matters, use
the FSA's own published file.
- **Not affiliated** with the Food Standards Agency or any
local authority.
- **Not a food safety assessment.** Approval is a legal status,
not a rating, and it says nothing about hygiene scores.

[Contact](/contact.md) · [Privacy](/privacy.md) · [Terms](/terms.md) · [Datasets](/data.md)

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Página: https://approval-number.pages.dev/about/
Fonte: Approved Food Establishments — Food Standards Agency, 102 monthly snapshots
Recolha: 2026-08-20