Food safety records that satisfy the EHO and the CQC, without the folders
We spend a good deal of our consultancy time in care home kitchens, and it is rarely the cooking that lets a home down. It is the fridge on the second floor nobody checked on Sunday, and the meal warmed up at two in the morning that nobody wrote down. Hubl puts the same short checks in front of the chef, the care staff and the night team, on a phone, and lets the operations manager see every home on one screen. And when the night carer has a question, Orbit, Hubl’s AI assistant, answers it from your own records.
Used across all 21 Dovehaven Care Homes sites
Two inspectors, one set of records
A restaurant gets one visit. A care home gets the Environmental Health Officer scoring the kitchen for its hygiene rating, then the CQC wanting to know that residents are fed safely. They ask different questions, but they are after the same proof: that the checks happen every day, not just on the day someone turns up with a clipboard.
EHO The Food Hygiene Rating
Care homes are rated 0 to 5 like a restaurant, and the rating goes online where relatives and commissioners find it. Of the three scores, confidence in management is, in our experience, the one that most often costs a home its 5, and that score is largely your paperwork.
CQC Safe, suitable food
Regulation 14 covers nutrition and hydration. CQC’s guidance says assessments must identify dietary intolerances and allergies, keep them under review, and that food is served at an appropriate temperature. Safe preparation and a clean, well-maintained kitchen sit under Regulations 12 and 15. Inspectors talk to care staff as well as managers about how a resident’s allergy is handled, then look for the record behind the answer.
You Assurance across every home
If you run more than one home you want to know tonight that the checks were done in all of them, not find out at the next inspection that one kitchen quietly stopped in March. Twelve paper diaries cannot tell you that. A dashboard can.
What the EHO looks for in a care home kitchen
The law is the same as for any kitchen. The residents are not, and officers know it. These are the things they spend their time on in a care home, and where we see paper records fall down most often.
- ✓Vulnerable residents. Listeria is the one officers worry about most in a care home, and the FSA publishes specific guidance for care settings on it. Expect them to check use-by dates on chilled ready-to-eat food, that chilled food is kept at 5°C or below, how long opened packs and pre-packed sandwiches are kept, and whether the frailest residents are being given higher-risk foods such as soft mould-ripened cheeses, pâté or cold-smoked fish.
- ✓Allergies and dietary needs per resident. One allergen matrix for the menu is not enough here. The officer wants a record for each resident, and some evidence that the person plating up at lunch has actually seen it.
- ✓Texture-modified meals. Purée and soft diets get cooked, blended, cooled and reheated, sometimes twice. Every extra step is another temperature to record and another place for the chain to break.
- ✓Unit kitchenettes and the fridges on every floor. In our experience the main kitchen’s records are usually decent. The gaps are in the kitchenette fridges on each floor, checked by care staff between medication rounds, or not checked at all.
- ✓Night-time and out-of-hours food. Warming a meal at 2 a.m. for someone who missed tea is food handling. The officer will want to know that the night carer knew what temperature to reach and wrote it down.
- ✓Food brought in by relatives. Birthday cakes, a favourite curry from home. You need a policy for what is accepted, how it is labelled and stored, and when it goes in the bin.
How Hubl covers it
One app for the chef, the care staff and the night team, on whatever phone or tablet is to hand, with the records kept the way inspectors ask for them.
Temperatures in every fridge, on every floor
Each unit and each fridge gets its own check, with the target built in. A reading out of range prompts for the corrective action there and then, so the fix is recorded with the problem. See temperature logs.
Checklists the night team can follow
Opening, closing and out-of-hours checks as tap-through lists, timestamped and recorded against the person who did them. A missed check shows on the dashboard as missed, not as a blank page found at inspection.
Allergens and dietary needs, kept live
Tag allergens and dietary suitability once per product and every dish that uses it updates. Filter by allergen or need at the point of plating, with a full history of who changed what. See allergen management.
One dashboard across every home
Your operations manager sees every home’s checks, failures and corrective actions in real time, colour-coded, without a site visit or a phone call. The evidence for CQC and for your own governance in one place. See the reporting dashboard.
Documents and training in one place
Your food safety management system, cleaning schedules, supplier records and training certificates stored where the officer can be shown them in a minute. See document storage.
Orbit, for the questions at 2 a.m.
Hubl’s AI assistant answers from your own records and safe methods. Which residents cannot have dairy, what to do when a fridge reads 9°C, which checks were missed this week: the questions that normally wait until the chef is back in. Meet Orbit.
How much paper is your group filling in?
Move the sliders to your numbers. This counts fridge and freezer readings only; add cooking, cooling, cleaning and deliveries and the real figure is several times larger.
In Hubl every reading is one tap with the target built in, timestamped against the person who did it, and the dashboard shows all 1 home tonight.
Free templates for care home kitchens
Staying on paper for now? Start with the two records officers ask for first. Both are free, and both are the ones we would want to see if we were auditing you.
“We have been looking to move away from paper diaries for some time, and Hubl offered the perfect solution. It has been extremely simple to roll out across all 21 sites without lengthy training. Our management team now has complete visibility of our food safety due diligence across the group.”
Jack Reynolds, Head of Catering and Food Safety, Dovehaven Care HomesCare home food safety questions, answered
Do care homes get a food hygiene rating?
Yes. A care home is a food business and gets inspected and rated under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, same as a restaurant. The rating is published on the FSA website, and relatives, commissioners and the CQC all know where to look. In Wales and Northern Ireland it has to be displayed at the home as well.
What does the CQC expect to see about food safety?
Three regulations are in play. Regulation 14, meeting nutritional and hydration needs, is the main one: CQC’s guidance says nutrition assessments must identify, as a minimum, dietary intolerances and allergies, that needs must be reviewed regularly, and that food should be served at an appropriate temperature. Regulation 12, safe care and treatment, covers managing risks and infection control, and Regulation 15 covers clean, suitable premises and equipment; between them that is your kitchen hygiene. On the day, inspectors talk to care staff as well as managers about how a resident’s dietary needs are met, follow the trail from the care plan to the kitchen, and can ask for the same food safety records the EHO would. A poor food hygiene rating is something they notice, and CQC can raise food safety concerns with the local authority.
Do the small fridges on each unit need temperature records?
Yes. If it holds residents’ food, milk or supplements it is part of your food safety system, and officers go to the unit kitchenettes on purpose because that is where records are weakest. Twice a day, the actual reading rather than a tick, and a note of what was done if it is over 5°C. In Hubl each fridge has its own check, so a carer can do it in the time it takes to boil a kettle.
How should we manage residents’ allergies and dietary needs in the kitchen?
One live record per resident: allergies, intolerances, texture level, preferences. It has to reach the person plating the meal, and it has to change the moment the care plan does. The failure we see most is a kitchen working from a printout that was accurate in January. Hubl keeps dietary and allergen information against products and dishes, so staff can filter by a resident’s needs at the point of serving rather than from memory.
Which food safety management pack applies to care homes?
The FSA publishes a Safer Food, Better Business supplement for residential care homes, used alongside the main SFBB pack for caterers. It is written for small residential homes that cook for their residents, and the FSA says it is not intended for nursing homes, which need fuller food safety procedures; larger homes and groups generally run a full HACCP-based system. Legally what you need is a documented system based on HACCP principles that reflects what you actually do, and digital records are accepted by local authorities. Our guide to the SFBB diary explains how the paper diary works and what changes when it moves to an app.
What does Orbit do in a care home?
Orbit is the AI assistant built into Hubl. It answers from your own records, safe methods and product information rather than from the open internet, so it knows which residents cannot have dairy, what the corrective action is when a unit fridge reads 9°C, and which checks were missed in which home this week. For a care home that means the night carer or the new cook gets the right answer at 2 a.m. without waking the manager, and every home gets the same answer. It also explains the reason behind a corrective action, which is what turns a rule into something staff actually follow. Meet Orbit.
See it working in one home first
Set up one kitchen and one unit, run the checks for a fortnight, then show the records to whoever visits next. Free for 14 days, no card needed.
Start a free 14-day trial