Food hygiene in nursery: registration, training and ratings

If your nursery gives children anything to eat or drink, from a beaker of milk to a cooked lunch, it is a food business. That brings two sets of rules: food hygiene law, enforced by your local authority’s environmental health team, and the EYFS, inspected by Ofsted. This guide covers both for settings in England.

Choking, allergies and supervising children while they eat are in a separate guide: safer eating in nursery.

Do you need to register as a food business?

Nurseries and pre-schools: yes. Register with your local authority at least 28 days before you start serving food. Registration is free and cannot be refused. If you are already open and have never registered, do it now; it is a legal requirement.

Childminders: not separately. Since 2014, registering with Ofsted is enough, because the information is shared with your local authority. The food hygiene rules still apply to everything you give children, with one exception: food a parent has prepared. Once it is with you, you still have to store it safely.

What does the EYFS say about food hygiene?

The frameworks in force from 1 September 2026 set four requirements. The paragraph numbers are for group and school-based providers, with the childminder framework in brackets.

• Training (3.72, or 3.71 for childminders). All staff involved in preparing and handling food must receive training in food hygiene. Childminders must be confident that they, and any assistants who prepare or handle food, are competent to do it.
• Facilities (3.72, or 3.71). There must be suitable facilities for preparing children’s food hygienically. Group settings must also have suitable sterilisation equipment for babies’ food.
• Water and nutrition (3.63, or 3.62). Meals, snacks and drinks you provide must be healthy, balanced and nutritious, and fresh drinking water must always be available and accessible to children.
• Food poisoning (3.73, or 3.72). You must notify Ofsted, or your childminder agency, of any food poisoning affecting two or more children cared for on the premises, as soon as reasonably practicable and within 14 days. Not doing so without a reasonable excuse is an offence.

Food hygiene training: what counts?

A food hygiene certificate is not compulsory in law. What you must be able to show is that everyone who handles food has been adequately trained, and GOV.UK recommends a food hygiene qualification as the way to do it. In practice, an inspector from either side will ask how you know your staff are trained, and a certificate with a date on it answers that in one sentence.

Train everyone who handles food, not only the cook. In a nursery that includes room staff who serve snacks, make up bottles or heat food brought from home.

Your food safety system

Food businesses must have food safety procedures based on HACCP principles: work out what could go wrong at each step, from delivery to the plate, and how you prevent it. You do not need to write this from scratch. The Food Standards Agency’s free Safer food, better business pack is built for exactly this, and there is a version for childminders.

Whatever you use, it should cover at least:

• Cross-contamination. Separate raw and ready-to-eat food. Wash chopping boards and surfaces in hot soapy water, and launder tea towels, cloths and sponges regularly.
• Cooking. Cook food until it is steaming hot all the way through, then let it cool before serving it to babies and young children.
• Chilling. See the fridge rules below.
• Cleaning. A schedule for what is cleaned, how and how often.
• Allergens. Know which allergens are in every meal and snack you serve. The 14 allergens are listed in the safer eating guide.

Fridges, cooling and defrosting

The Food Standards Agency’s numbers for childcare are simple:

What	The rule
Chilled food	Kept at 8°C or below. This is a legal requirement in England.
Fridge setting	5°C or below, which keeps food under 8°C.
Checking	Every day, with a fridge thermometer, not the fridge’s own display.
Cooling hot food	Ideally within one to two hours, then into the fridge or freezer.
Leftovers	Used within 48 hours.
Defrosting	In the fridge, or in the microwave only if cooking straight away.
Thawed meat	Used within 24 hours and never refrozen.

The pack says you only need to write down a fridge check when something goes wrong. Many local authorities like to see a daily log anyway, so ask yours what it expects.

Food from home

Packed lunches, birthday cakes and baby food from home are not covered by your food hygiene system, because you did not prepare them. They are still your responsibility once they arrive:

• Put anything perishable in the fridge on arrival, labelled with the child’s name.
• Check it against the child’s allergy and dietary information, as you would your own food.
• Reheat only if your policy allows it, and then until steaming hot, cooling it before you serve it.

Handwashing

Children should wash their hands with soap and warm water before every meal and snack, and after using the toilet or handling animals. Food that falls on the floor is not eaten. Staff wash their hands before handling food and after every nappy change, with no exceptions for a quick snack.

Your food hygiene rating

Nurseries registered as food businesses are inspected by the local authority and rated on the food hygiene rating scheme. The inspector looks at three things:

1. How hygienically food is handled: preparation, cooking, reheating, cooling and storage.
2. The condition of the premises: cleanliness, layout, lighting, ventilation and facilities.
3. How you manage food safety, and whether you can show it is done every day.

Ratings run from 0, urgent improvement necessary, to 5, very good. To get a 5 you need to do well on all three. Displaying your rating is voluntary in England, although many nurseries put a 5 in the window because parents look for it. It is compulsory in Wales and Northern Ireland.

If you disagree with your rating, you can appeal within 21 days, publish a written right to reply beside it, or ask for a re-inspection once you have made improvements. Your local authority will explain how.

Childminders are not normally inspected for food unless there is a complaint or a case of food poisoning linked to the setting.

Food hygiene checklist

• Registered as a food business with the local authority (nurseries), or with Ofsted (childminders).
• A food safety system based on HACCP principles, written down and in use.
• Everyone who prepares, serves or handles food has had food hygiene training, with dates recorded.
• Suitable facilities for preparing food, including sterilisation equipment for babies’ food.
• Fridge set at 5°C or below, checked daily with a thermometer.
• Hot food cooled within two hours; leftovers used within 48.
• Raw and ready-to-eat food kept apart; boards and cloths cleaned.
• Allergens known for every meal and snack.
• Food from home stored safely and checked against dietary needs.
• Fresh drinking water available to children all day.
• Children wash hands before eating; staff wash before handling food.
• Everyone knows that food poisoning in two or more children is notified to Ofsted within 14 days.

Where Coat Peg fits

Food hygiene happens in the kitchen. What Coat Peg keeps is the record at the table. When staff log a meal, the app asks once per sitting who checked each child’s food. It defaults to whoever is signed in, so that takes one tap, and the name is saved with every child’s meal record. Allergy action plans sit on each child’s record with a review date, and Admin flags any plan that is past review. Families see what their child ate in the end-of-day summary, with no extra writing for staff.