UK Food Temperature Rules: 8°C, 63°C and What to Record

The two temperatures the law sets for UK kitchens, the guidance figures officers check you against, how Scotland differs, and the records that prove you're in control.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the law sets two temperatures. Chilled food that could grow bacteria has to be kept at 8°C or below. Hot food kept for service or display has to stay at 63°C or above. Almost every other number you've seen on a kitchen wall, from 5°C fridges to 75°C cooking and -18°C freezers, is guidance.

Guidance still matters. It's what an officer measures you against, and businesses that follow a recognised industry guide get the benefit of that when officers judge them. But it helps to know which numbers can land you with an offence and which ones are good practice.

Scotland is different. Its law has no 8°C figure, but reheated food must reach 82°C. More on that below.

The numbers at a glance

What	Figure	Law or guidance
Chilled food	8°C or below	Law in England, Wales and NI
Fridge setting	5°C or below	Guidance (SFBB)
Hot holding	63°C or above	Law in all four nations
Cooking	75°C for 30 seconds, or an equivalent such as 70°C for 2 minutes	Guidance (SFBB)
Reheating	Hot right through to the centre, once only	Guidance in England, Wales and NI
Reheating in Scotland	82°C or above	Law in Scotland
Cooling	As quickly as possible	Law (no figure)
Freezer	-18°C or below	Guidance
Probe check	-1°C to 1°C in iced water, 99°C to 101°C in boiling water	Guidance (SFBB)

The two legal limits, and their exemptions

The cold and hot holding rules are in Schedule 4 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013. Wales and Northern Ireland have the same rules, with the same paragraph numbers, in their own food hygiene regulations.

Cold: keeping food that's likely to support the growth of pathogenic micro-organisms "at a temperature above 8 °C commits an offence" (paragraph 2). The rule doesn't cover food that's safe at room temperature, dried or canned food until it's opened, food being ripened or matured, or raw food that's going to be processed further.

Hot: keeping cooked or reheated food for service or display "at a temperature below 63 °C" is an offence (paragraph 6).

Both rules have a tolerance built in for service, and they're the part people get wrong:

Cold food on display can sit above 8°C for less than four hours (paragraph 5). It only applies once. If the food has already been on display above 8°C before, the defence is gone.
Hot food on display can drop below 63°C for less than two hours (paragraph 7). Again, only once. SFBB puts it plainly: you can take food out of hot holding to display it for up to two hours, "but you can only do this once."

So a tray of sandwiches that's been on the counter all lunchtime can't go back in the fridge and come out again tomorrow. Neither can a bain-marie of curry that has been sitting at 55°C. When the time is up, throw it away. Better still, label display trays with the time they came out so nobody has to guess.

There's also a defence for short, unavoidable spells above 8°C: moving food between premises and a vehicle, handling during preparation, defrosting equipment and "temporary breakdown of equipment", for "a limited period only". That's what covers you when the walk-in fails at 11 a.m. It won't cover food you leave in a dead fridge until the engineer turns up on Thursday.

What's guidance, and why officers care about it anyway

Fridges at 5°C. Safer Food Better Business recommends setting fridges and chilled display equipment at 5°C or below to make sure chilled food stays at 8°C or below. The gap is your safety margin. A fridge that reads 7°C at 8 a.m. will be over the legal limit by the middle of a busy service, with the door opening every thirty seconds.

Cooking. SFBB gives time and temperature combinations that kill harmful bacteria: 60°C for at least 45 minutes, 65°C for 10 minutes, 70°C for 2 minutes, 75°C for 30 seconds or 80°C for 6 seconds. There's no legal cooking temperature in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, but if you can't show how you know a burger or a chicken thigh is cooked, expect questions.

Freezers at -18°C. That's guidance too. The law doesn't set a freezer figure.

How strictly an officer marks you depends on what they find. In the FHRS Brand Standard, the example of a hygiene score of 10, enough to cost you a 5 rating, is chilled food "generally below 8°C but some evidence of rising above such as when busy". The example of a 25 is "food kept out of temperature control, fridge not operating at correct temperature". Our guide to getting a 5 food hygiene rating explains how those scores turn into a rating.

Cooling: the rule without a number

The law says food must be "cooled as quickly as possible" after cooking to a temperature that doesn't put health at risk (Regulation 852/2004, Annex II, Chapter IX). SFBB doesn't add a time limit. Councils fill the gap in their own guidance, and they don't all agree. Ealing says high-risk food should be cooled to room temperature within 90 minutes. Islington's adapted SFBB pack says generally less than 2 hours, and rice within an hour. Northern Ireland's Safe Catering pack says within two hours.

If you want one figure for every site, use the strictest: cool to room temperature within 90 minutes, then straight into the fridge. In practice:

Divide large batches into shallow containers. A 20-litre stockpot of chilli won't cool in time however long you wait.
Use an ice bath or a blast chiller for rice, stocks and sauces.
Write down the time cooling started and the time it went into the fridge. That's the record that shows you're in control.

Reheating

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, SFBB's rule is to reheat food thoroughly, until it reaches a safe temperature in the centre, and to reheat it only once. There's no legal reheating temperature. Many kitchens probe to 75°C to be sure, which is sensible but not required.

Scotland does it differently

Schedule 4 of the Food Hygiene (Scotland) Regulations 2006 has no 8°C limit. Instead, food must be kept in a refrigerator, a refrigerating chamber or a cool ventilated place, or above 63°C. Food being cooled "as quickly as possible" under hygienic conditions is exempt while it cools.

The big difference is reheating. In Scotland, food reheated before it's served or displayed must reach at least 82°C, unless that would spoil its quality. Food Standards Scotland's CookSafe manual also recommends fridges at 5°C or below. If you're opening in Edinburgh or Glasgow, put 82°C on the reheating step from day one.

What to write down

SFBB sets out the records most small kitchens use, and officers recognise them:

Fridge and freezer temperatures, checked at least once a day as part of your opening checks.
"Prove it" checks: probing food to prove your methods work, such as the core temperature of something you've cooked or cooled. Recording them is part of the SFBB closing checks.
Probe thermometer checks: iced water should read between -1°C and 1°C, and boiling water between 99°C and 101°C. Follow the manufacturer's advice on how often, or check regularly, for example once a month. The SFBB four-weekly review asks whether probes have been checked in the last four weeks and the results recorded.
Anything that went wrong and what you did: the fridge that read 9°C, the food you threw away, the engineer you called.

The records can be on paper or on a screen. The FSA says you can keep the SFBB diary electronically. Our guide to Safer Food Better Business records covers the rest of the diary, and the food temperature log template gives you a format to start with.

Running the same rules across several sites

A few habits stop one site drifting from the others:

Use the same targets everywhere, and set them tighter than the law: 5°C for fridges, 63°C for hot holding, 75°C as your check for cooking and reheating. If one site has a kitchen in Scotland, it reheats to 82°C.
Time-label everything on display. The 4-hour and 2-hour exemptions only work if someone knows when the clock started.
Treat transport as its own step. If a central kitchen sends chilled food to the other sites, probe it when it leaves and when it arrives. The defence for moving food between premises only covers a limited period, so you want proof it was short. Our central kitchen guide covers the handover.
Look at the readings, not just whether they were taken. Every box filled in is not the same as every fridge holding temperature. A reading of 7°C every morning for a week is a fridge about to fail.

This guide summarises the temperature rules for food businesses in the UK. It isn't legal advice. Your council's food team has the final word on your premises.