The Safer Food, Better Business pack is a ring binder with a set of printed forms in it. The daily diary pages are the ones that get used up, because every open day takes a line and every four weeks takes a review page.
Everything else in the pack, the safe method sheets, the allergen chart, the training record, is filled in once and referred back to. The diary is the consumable.
What is actually on a diary sheet
A week per spread, with a line per day for opening checks, closing checks and anything that went wrong, and a four-weekly review page at the end of each block. Businesses often clip the SC2, SC3 and SC4 temperature forms into the same binder, which is why "diary sheets" and "temperature sheets" tend to mean the same thing in practice.
Where refills come from
- Your local authority. Many environmental health teams hand out the pack and refills free or at cost, and it is worth asking before paying for them.
- The Food Standards Agency publishes the pack and its forms, so the blank templates can be downloaded and printed.
- Stationers and food safety suppliers sell pre-printed refill packs.
All three give you the same thing: blank paper that still has to be filled in by hand, kept dry in a kitchen, and produced on the day an inspector calls.
Printing filled-in forms instead of blank ones
The app records the diary on a phone and prints it onto the same official FSA forms, already filled in. You choose a date range and get a PDF: the diary for that period, the four-weekly review if the range covers one, and whichever records you asked for.
So the binder still exists if you want it. What changes is that the paper comes out of the printer complete, signed with the name of whoever made each entry, rather than going into the kitchen blank and coming back half finished.
The official forms
Not a lookalike. The app fills the FSA template, so what an inspector reads is the document they already know.
Any period
A week, four weeks, a year. Useful when an inspector asks for "the last three months" and the paper version means photocopying a binder.
Signed entries
Each line carries the name of the person who made it, which is the thing a shared clipboard cannot do.
The whole pack in one PDF
There is also a single export that bundles everything an inspector asks for, in the order they ask for it: the Safe Method Completion Record at the front, then the safe method sheets, the allergen chart, the staff training record, and the diary for the period with its four-weekly review.
Sections with nothing in them are left out of the bundle, though the completion record still lists every sheet including the blank ones. It is deliberately honest: a pack that hid its gaps would be worse than useless on the day someone checks.
Common questions
Where can I get SFBB diary refill sheets?
From your local authority, which often supplies them free or at cost, from the FSA as downloadable templates, or from stationers and food safety suppliers.
Can I download the SFBB diary as a PDF?
Blank templates are published by the FSA. The app exports a filled-in PDF on the same forms for any date range you choose.
Do I have to keep the diary on paper?
No. The records have to exist and you have to be able to produce them. The pack does not require paper, and an inspector can be handed a printout or a PDF.
How long do I need to keep diary sheets?
Keep them for at least the period your local authority asks for, which is commonly the last twelve months. Digital records do not get lost, damaged or thrown out in a clear-up.
Are the SC2 and SC3 temperature sheets part of the diary?
They are separate forms, but most businesses keep them in the same binder, so "diary sheets" often means both.
Keep reading
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