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How we count.

We count food premises awaiting inspection by downloading every local authority's open-data file from the Food Standards Agency, reading each establishment's rating value, and counting those marked AwaitingInspection or Awaiting Inspection. We publish the council extract date beside every figure and never estimate missing data.

Sources: Food Standards Agency, food hygiene rating open data and API: ratings.food.gov.uk/open-data, api.ratings.food.gov.uk

Sources

  • List of authorities: FSA ratings API, api.ratings.food.gov.uk/Authorities (version 2). 363 authorities listed on 19 Oct 2026.
  • One XML open-data file per authority, linked from that list (ratings.food.gov.uk/OpenDataFiles/…). Each file carries its own extract date.
  • Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0. Not endorsed by the FSA.

What counts as awaiting

An establishment counts when its RatingValue is “AwaitingInspection” (FHRS: England, Wales, Northern Ireland) or “Awaiting Inspection” (FHIS: Scotland). Rating keys seen on 19 Oct 2026: fhrs_awaitinginspection_en-GB, fhis_awaiting_inspection_en-GB and fhrs_ratingawaited_cy-gb (Welsh authorities). We do not count “Exempt”, “Awaiting Publication” or any other status.

Two counts

Awaiting is every awaiting establishment in the file. With postcode leaves out records with no published postcode (often home-based businesses whose address is withheld). Our council pages and sample CSVs use the “with postcode” figure, because they only show rows with a postcode district. That is why, for example, Leeds shows 1,643 on the backlog table and 788 on its council page.

Our dates

  • Extract date: the date in the council’s file.
  • Fetched: when we downloaded the files (19 Oct 2026).
  • First spotted: the date we first saw a record. It is our date, never a registration or opening date.

Known limits

  • Councils publish at different times; some extracts are older than others (22 Apr 2026 to 18 Oct 2026 in this run).
  • Awaiting includes re-registrations and premises that may not have started trading.
  • We cannot see why a premises is waiting or for how long.
  • The FSA’s own national figures come from council returns with a different scope and date. See the FSA board paper at food.gov.uk/board-papers/annual-local-authority-performance.

Reproduce it

The script is backlog/fetch_backlog.py. It makes read-only downloads and writes backlog.json. Published counts: /data/inspection-backlog.json.

Corrections

If a figure is wrong, we fix it, re-date it and say what changed. Contact route: to be confirmed before launch.

See the backlog table → · What awaiting inspection means