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- “Approval withdrawn.”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.