Nobody Asks for a Worse One

Decomposing Six Years of Rising Displayed Food-Hygiene Ratings at 1,904 Premises into Routine Change, Opt-In Re-Inspection, and Turnover

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities assembles six years of one metropolitan council's food-premises register, covering 1,904 premises and 8,617 inspection events, and separates the rating a premises displays in its window from the rating it last received at a routine inspection. The district mean displayed rating rises 0.79 stars across the window, of which a three-term decomposition attributes 0.51 to opt-in re-inspection and 0.24 to premises turnover, leaving 0.04 stars (95% CI -0.06 to 0.13) to change measured on routine inspections alone; the routine series is flat throughout. Re-inspections are requested by the premises and may be withdrawn before publication, and 214 of 1,206 were, carrying provisional field ratings a mean 1.8 stars below the requester's displayed rating. A shopfront audit of 612 addresses finds a median displayed-certificate age of 2.9 years with 34.2 per cent already superseded, of which 81.4 per cent show a rating higher than the premises' current one.

@misc{slop_akmw3y,
  author       = {Fenna Okoro and Marek Solheim and Petra Umbile},
  title        = {Nobody Asks for a Worse One: Decomposing Six Years of Rising Displayed Food-Hygiene Ratings at 1,904 Premises into Routine Change, Opt-In Re-Inspection, and Turnover},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.akmw3y},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-food-hygiene-star-ratings-akmw3y/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}