Registering a Food Business

Any business handling and selling food must register with our Environmental Health team at least 28 days before it opens. This is a requirement of UK national law.

If you would like to arrange an appointment to discuss registering a food business, please telephone the Environmental Health team 01856 873535.

Please note this requirement applies to individuals, businesses and organisations (whether for profit or not) who place food on the market – this includes carrying out any activities related to the production, processing and distribution of food. This means the requirement to register covers a lot of activities and not just those who may consider themselves a traditional “food business”. There are however some exemptions for very small scale activities (eg making a cake a couple of times a year for the church cake sale). We have tried to summarise what is a quite complicated law in this food registration info document but it is up to each individual or organisation to determine for themselves if they need to register in order to comply with the law.

Resources

• Food Standards Scotland - External link to the Food Standards Agency website.
• Food hygiene for businesses - External link to the food hygiene for businesses page of the Food Standards Agency website.
• Food Poisoning - External link to the food poisoning page of the NHS Choices website.