Southend Food Hygiene: All 22 New Ratings Scored a 5

Every food business inspected in Southend since the start of August has come out with the top score. All 22 ratings published for the city since 1 August 2026 are fives, the Food Standards Agency register shows, checked this morning (FSA food hygiene ratings).

That covers nine restaurants and cafés, seven takeaways, three caring premises, a pub, a supermarket and a newsagent, spread across Westcliff, central Southend, Leigh, Eastwood and Shoeburyness. There were no fours, no threes and nothing lower.

Rated five since 1 August:

• Westcliff: Colliers (Collier News, 173 Hamlet Court Road), The Trading Rooms (522 London Road), New West Caffe (180 Hamlet Court Road), The Quirky Bird Cafe (775 London Road), Flippers (155 North Road), Lennys Coffee & More (460 London Road), Vedas Kitchen (60 Milton Road)
• Southend: Ashiana Indian Restaurant (565 Southchurch Road), Mr Ming (66 Southchurch Avenue), Twizzle Tops (rear of 74 Christchurch Road), Billy Hundreds (The Hundreds Cafe, Eastern Esplanade), the hot dog kart at Adventure Island, China Village (3 Earls Hall Parade), Favorite Chicken (87 to 89 Prince Avenue), Grumpy’s Diner (759 to 763 Southchurch Road), Fermento Pizzeria (3 Eastern Esplanade)
• Leigh and Eastwood: Small Friends Childrens Day Nursery (15 Rectory Grove), Barlow And Fields (Sterling Hall, Elm Road), Qmin Indian Takeaway (1235 London Road), Byfords Food Hall (114 to 118 Eastwood Old Road), Taste Of China (991 London Road)
• Shoeburyness: Friars Centre Playgroup (Sweet Peas, 8 Centurion Close)

A rating is a snapshot of what a food safety officer found on the day of the inspection, not a verdict on the food (Food Standards Agency).

The wider register is less uniform

A clean month is not a clean register. Southend’s register holds 1,480 entries. 86 are exempt from rating, low-risk premises such as newsagents selling wrapped goods, and 11 are waiting for their first inspection. That leaves 1,383 with a published rating.

4, good 241

3, generally satisfactory 116

2, improvement necessary 34

1, major improvement 15

0, urgent improvement 1 A further 86 premises are exempt from rating and 11 are awaiting their first inspection. Graphic by Southend Today

Of those 1,383, 976 hold a five, which is 70.6%. Another 241 hold a four, so 88.0% of rated Southend food businesses are at four or five. At the other end, 34 are on two, 15 are on one and one is on zero.

The one zero, and the ones on one

The single zero rating on the Southend register belongs to Bogaz Kitchen, a takeaway at 382A Rayleigh Road, Eastwood, rated on 20 April 2026. Zero means urgent improvement is necessary.

Fifteen premises are on one, meaning major improvement is necessary. The most recent, all rated this year, are:

Those ratings are the ones published today. Every business has three safeguards under the scheme, and they matter when you read a low score:

• it can appeal in writing to the council within 21 days of being told its rating, and the appeal is decided by a different officer from the one who gave it
• it has a right to reply, published alongside the rating on the FSA website, to explain what has changed or what was unusual on the day
• it can ask for a re-rating inspection once improvements have been made

(Food Standards Agency safeguards guidance).

One quirk worth knowing before you trust a rating

The register does not expire. Some entries are years old. One Southend mobile caterer still carries a rating given in March 2017, because a mobile trader that is hard to find is hard to re-inspect.

So read the date next to the score. A five from last month and a five from 2019 are not the same claim about a kitchen today.

What it means for you

• Look the rating up rather than relying on a sticker. The guidance sets a legal duty to display in Northern Ireland and a bilingual notice duty in Wales. It sets no equivalent duty in England, so a Southend business that does not display a rating is not doing anything wrong.
• Check the date as well as the number, for the reason above.
• A low rating is about hygiene, not taste. The officer assesses food handling, the physical condition of the premises, and the management systems that keep both right in future.
• If a rating looks wrong to you, the FSA takes reports about individual ratings, and the council is the body that inspects and scores.

You can search every rated business in the city on the FSA ratings site, and browse local traders in our Southend business directory.

Sources

• Food Standards Agency food hygiene ratings register, Southend-on-Sea local authority data, read via the FSA open data API on 7 September 2026
• Food Hygiene Rating Scheme guidance and the safeguards for businesses