A safe method is one page about one hazard. It sets out what can go wrong, what you do so it does not, and what you do on the day it does anyway. The Food Standards Agency writes the hazard and the guidance; you fill in the parts that are specific to your kitchen, and you sign it.
There are 31 of them, and they are the part of Safer Food, Better Business that gets left in the binder. That is a shame, because unlike the diary they are a one-off. You do them once, properly, and then revisit one only when something in your kitchen changes.
What a safe method is for
Food safety law asks you to have a food safety management system based on the principles of HACCP. For a small caterer, the safe methods are that system. They are the written answer to the question an inspector is really asking: not "is your kitchen clean today", but "do you know how this kitchen goes wrong, and have you decided in advance what to do about it".
That is why a blank sheet is worse than an imperfect one. A method you have thought about and written in your own words shows a system. A pack of untouched FSA pages shows a purchase.
The five sections
The 31 sheets are grouped into five sections. The counts below are the pack as the app implements it.
| Section | Sheets | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-contamination | 7 | Separating foods, personal hygiene, handwashing, cloths, clear and clean as you go, physical and chemical contamination, and pest control. |
| Cleaning | 4 | Cleaning effectively, your cleaning schedule, maintenance, and equipment. |
| Chilling | 4 | Chilled storage and display, chilling down hot food, defrosting, and freezing. |
| Cooking | 7 | Cooking safely, reheating, hot holding, ready-to-eat food, foods that need extra care, checking your menu, and acrylamide. |
| Management | 9 | Opening and closing checks, prove it, extra checks, stock control, suppliers and contractors, training and supervision, customers, product withdrawal and recall, and managing allergen information. |
What completing one actually means
People search for the safe method completion record, and the phrase is slightly misleading: there is no separate record to fill in. A safe method is complete when you have read it, answered the questions on it for your own kitchen, decided it applies to you or recorded why it does not, and signed it with a date.
The two parts that get skipped are the last two. An unsigned method is a document someone printed. A method marked "not applicable" with no reason is a gap an inspector will ask about, and "we do not do that here" is usually a perfectly good answer that nobody wrote down.
- Read the hazard and the FSA guidance on the sheet.
- Answer the sheet’s questions for your kitchen, not in general.
- Mark it as applying to you, or record why it does not.
- Sign and date it.
- Revisit it when the thing it describes changes: new equipment, a new dish, a new supplier.
Safe methods and the diary are different jobs
The safe methods say how your kitchen works. The diary says what happened today. An inspector reads them together, and the pair is what the pack is for: a method claiming you check fridge temperatures twice a day, and a diary showing that you did.
The failure mode is a beautiful set of methods and an empty diary, which reads as a system that was designed and never run. The opposite, a full diary and blank methods, reads as habits nobody has written down. Neither survives a bad day.
Working through them in the app
All 31 sheets are in the app, in the same five sections, with the FSA’s own guidance on each one. You answer the questions on your phone, mark the sheet as applying or not, and sign it. The app tracks which sheets are done and which are outstanding, so you can work through them a few at a time rather than in one sitting.
Each completed sheet prints onto the official form, and all of them go into the EHO pack alongside the diary and the temperature records. The guidance built in is developed and assured through our Primary Authority partnership with Buckinghamshire and Surrey Trading Standards.
Common questions
How many safe methods are there?
Thirty-one, grouped into cross-contamination, cleaning, chilling, cooking and management.
Do I have to complete all of them?
You have to consider all of them. Some will not apply to your business, and the right thing to do is record that they do not and why, rather than leave them blank.
Is there a separate safe method completion record?
No. Completion is recorded on the sheet itself: your answers, and your signature and date. What people usually mean by the phrase is the list showing which sheets are done.
How often do safe methods need reviewing?
When something changes, and at the four-weekly review, which asks whether anything about the way you work has moved on since you wrote them.
Can staff complete them?
They can help, but the methods describe decisions about how the business runs, so they are normally the owner or manager’s to sign.
Keep reading
Thirty-one sheets, a few at a time
Free on iOS and Android, printed onto the FSA forms.
