fsa

name	fsa
description	Query the Food Standards Agency Food Hygiene Rating Scheme API — every food business in England, Wales and Northern Ireland scored 0-5 for hygiene by their council (the Scotland equivalent FHIS uses Pass / Improvement Required). ~660,000 establishments, each with the inspecting council, inspection date, and hygiene + structural + management-confidence sub-scores. Use when the question is about food hygiene ratings for a postcode, area, business, or council, when comparing inspection performance across local authorities, or when food-safety debates in Parliament reference specific outbreaks or rating distributions. Free, no auth, but the API requires the header `x-api-version: 2` (library injects it automatically).
license	Open Government Licence v3.0 (Crown copyright; Food Standards Agency)
metadata	{"facility":"fsa","cli-alias":"fsa","base-url":"https://api.ratings.food.gov.uk","provenance":{"tier":3,"operator":"Food Standards Agency (FSA)","service":"api.ratings.food.gov.uk","upstream-data":"Hygiene ratings issued by local authorities under the FHRS (England, Wales, NI) and FHIS (Scotland) schemes","citation-short":"via FSA Food Hygiene Rating Scheme","citation-formal":"Food Standards Agency, Food Hygiene Rating Scheme API, retrieved {date}, OGL v3.0","confidence":"authoritative","confidence-notes":"Authoritative for FSA-published ratings as of inspection date. Inspection cadence varies by business risk category — recently-opened businesses may show 'AwaitingInspection'. Voluntary (England) since 2010 but ratings must be displayed by law in Wales (2013) and NI (2016)."}}

FSA Food Hygiene Rating Scheme

Base URL: https://api.ratings.food.gov.uk. JSON, no API key; the service requires the header x-api-version: 2 (library injects).

Two schemes

Scheme	Where	Score
FHRS	England, Wales, NI	0 (urgent improvement) to 5 (very good)
FHIS	Scotland	Pass / Improvement Required

What's wrapped

Endpoint	Use
/Establishments	The ratings themselves. Filter by name, address, lat/lon + radius, council, scheme, rating, business type.
/Establishments/<id>	One business.
/Authorities	The 363 inspecting authorities.
/Authorities/<id>	One authority — includes contact, inspection performance counts.
Reference: /Regions, /Countries, /BusinessTypes, /Ratings, /RatingOperators, /SchemeTypes, /SortOptions

CLI

# Postcode-ish lookups (use lat/lon from `mapit postcode`)
parl fsa establishments --lat 51.4968 --lon -0.1262 --max-distance-km 1 --take 50

# By council
parl fsa authorities --take 363                    # find council id
parl fsa establishments --local-authority-id 197

# Only Scottish (FHIS) records
parl fsa establishments --scheme-type-key FHIS

# Only 5-star FHRS records
parl fsa establishments --rating-key fhrs_5_en

# Reference data
parl fsa ratings
parl fsa business-types

Joins to Parliament

• Use mapit to resolve a constituency to its containing councils, then fsa authorities to confirm the inspecting body and fsa establishments --local-authority-id to enumerate ratings under that council.
• The FSA's CEO appears before EFRA select committee periodically — pair with committees.
• Outbreaks debated in hansard (e.g. Pret 2018 allergen deaths Bill) — cross-reference specific affected businesses here.

Provenance to cite

Tier 3 — third-party (FSA), authoritative.

• Inline cite: "(via FSA Food Hygiene Rating Scheme)" — once per paragraph.
• Quote both the rating value AND the rating date — ratings can go years between inspections.
• For "this constituency has X businesses with rating < 2" statements, cite the date you pulled the data; ratings change.
• See ../../docs/provenance.md.