Food Safety and Allergen PolicyA Food Safety and Allergen Policy written for your service
- Written for your organisation, not a template with your logo on it
- Read and approved by a person before it carries your name
- Verified against all 42 required elements of the legislation below
- Kept updated when the law changes, so it never quietly goes stale
No subscription needed. First year of updates included, £12 a year after that.
One-off, first year of updates included. Delivered within 2 working days of your details. Also in the Statutory Starter Pack, 20 policies for £495.
Trusted by UK care providers
Let's build your Food Safety and Allergen Policy
Answer 8 quick questions, about three minutes, and we'll write this policy for your service, in your name, with your people. You can skip anything and add it later.
Asked once, reused for every policy you buy
That's everything we need
0 of 8 answered. You can add the rest at any point before we write it.
- Registered company name
- Trading name (if different)
- Service address
- CQC provider ID
- CQC location ID
- Registered manager
- Nominated individual
- Food safety and allergen lead
Your answers are saved on this device and carried into your order.
Built from the law, checked against the law
The legislation, CQC standards and guidance we analyse to write it.
Your Food Safety and Allergen Policy is structured from these regulations, then verified against every required element of each one before a person signs it off. If the law changes, your policy is updated and you are told what changed and why.
Food allergen information and Natasha's Law (Food Information Regulations 2014)
- Specifies which food operations fall under PPDS labelling requirements (food packaged and sold on same premises, e.g. café, shop, visitors' tea bar, fundraising events) versus non-prepacked food (plated meals in dining room) versus prepacked food requiring full labelling (food prepared at central kitchen and delivered to another site)
- Establishes a documented procedure for obtaining allergen data from all suppliers and revalidating that data when suppliers or products change, with responsibility assigned for reading revised specifications
- Requires a documented recipe specification for every dish prepared, including improvised dishes, stating which of the fourteen allergens (cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphur dioxide and sulphites above 10mg/kg or litre, lupin, molluscs) are present
- Requires an allergen matrix mapping all dishes to the fourteen allergens, with a defined frequency for updating it
- Establishes a documented route by which a resident's allergy recorded in the care record reliably reaches the person assembling the plate on the day of service, and a route by which changes to allergy information reach the kitchen the same day
- Requires HACCP-based cross-contamination controls including physical separation of preparation, dedicated equipment for allergen-containing foods, and validated cleaning procedures between allergen and non-allergen food preparation
Food hygiene legislation (including Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 and Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013)
- Identifies the care home as a registered food business and name the company as the food business operator legally responsible for compliance
- Requires implementation of a documented food safety management system based on HACCP principles, identifying critical control points (including cooling processes) with written limits and records
- Specifies that menus follow Food Standards Agency guidance for vulnerable groups, explicitly addressing high-risk foods for immunosuppressed residents (including restrictions on pre-packed sandwiches, pâté, cold sliced ham, soft cheese, and other Listeria-risk foods)
- Establishes temperature control requirements with specific limits (e.g. 63°C at service) and monitoring procedures covering the entire service chain including trolleys and trays at point of consumption, not just kitchen dispatch
- Defines all staff who handle food (including care staff who butter toast, make tea, or assist with meals) as food handlers subject to hygiene training and procedures
- Requires a 48-hour exclusion period for any food handler following sickness or diarrhoea, with documented fitness-to-work procedures that override staffing pressures
Food Safety Act 1990
- States that provision of food to residents in exchange for a weekly fee or commissioned package constitutes a sale under the Food Safety Act 1990 and triggers all legal obligations under the Act
- Identifies the documented evidence required to establish the section 21 defence (all reasonable precautions and due diligence), specifically: supplier specifications, HACCP records, temperature logs, training matrix, cleaning schedules, fitness-to-work forms, and records demonstrating that these were reviewed and acted upon when deficiencies were identified
- Specifies that where catering is outsourced, the care home retains legal responsibility and must maintain documentary evidence of how it specified requirements to the caterer, audited the caterer's performance, and monitored ongoing compliance
- Identifies that under section 36, the registered manager and nominated individual can be personally prosecuted where food safety offences are attributable to their neglect, and that delegation of kitchen oversight to a chef does not remove this personal liability
- Requires that food safety risk assessments specifically consider the vulnerability of the resident population (age, health conditions, medications such as proton pump inhibitors, communication ability) when determining whether food is fit for human consumption, with specific reference to high-risk items such as chilled sandwiches, pâté, soft cheese and Listeria risk
- Establishes the complete chain of allergen control from admission assessment through care planning to meal service, ensuring that dietary requirements and allergens recorded in care plans are accurately communicated to and implemented by the person preparing and serving food, not relying solely on kitchen allergen matrices
Regulation 14: Meeting nutritional and hydration needs
- Requires nutritional screening using a defined tool (e.g. MUST) on admission and at specified intervals thereafter, with documented action taken on scores that trigger intervention
- Specifies that resident weights are taken at defined intervals, plotted over time, and escalated against a written threshold when unplanned weight loss occurs
- Requires individual fluid targets to be calculated and set for each resident based on their specific characteristics (not a single house-wide target figure), and must specify that fluid intake charts are totalled daily by a named responsible person
- Requires that recommendations from dietitians and speech and language therapists (including specific IDDSI texture modification levels) are transcribed into both the care plan and the kitchen's working systems, and that these two systems are verified to match
- Addresses how mealtime assistance will be provided to residents who cannot eat or drink independently, including how staffing levels and time allocation at mealtimes will meet assessed needs
- Defines how food and hydration provision will be individualised to meet clinical needs (texture-modified diets, thickened fluids, diabetic diets, renal diets, allergen avoidance, fortified diets, enteral feeding), cultural and religious requirements (halal, kosher, observance of fasts), ethical preferences (vegetarian, vegan), and personal preferences
Written for your service
What we ask you, so none of it is assumed.
Most policy packs are one document sold to everyone with a find and replace on the home name. Your Food Safety and Allergen Policy is written from the legislation above and from your answers to the questions below. Where you have told us something, it says so. Where you have not, it sets out what must happen rather than claiming you already do it.
Your registered name, address, CQC numbers and who holds the key roles. About three minutes. Nothing else is asked before you buy.
Asked once in your own account and used across every policy you own, so a second policy never asks you the same thing twice.
Why it matters. A policy that claims you assess your premises annually, when you never have, is not a harmless overstatement. It is a signed statement handed to your inspector. We would rather write what you must do than guess what you already do.
How it is made
From your details to a policy you can stand behind.
The short questions above: who you are, your CQC registration, and the people this policy names.
One section per required element of the legislation, in your name, with your people.
Automated checks against every required element, then a person reads it before it ships.
When legislation changes, your policy is updated and you are told what changed and why.
Common questions
What you are actually buying.
What exactly do I receive?
A complete Food Safety and Allergen Policy written for your organisation, in your dashboard and as a print-ready PDF on your own letterhead. It names your service, your registration details and your leads, because you gave us them.
Is this a template?
No. Each policy is written for the organisation buying it, structured from the legislation itself, verified against 42 required regulatory elements, and read by a person before it carries your name.
How quickly will I get it?
Within 2 working days of you completing the short questions above. Most arrive sooner.
What happens when the law changes?
We monitor UK care legislation continuously. When something affecting this policy changes, your copy is updated and you are told what changed and why. The first year of updates is included, then £12 a year per policy.
Can I edit the policy myself?
No, and deliberately so: we stand behind every word we approve. If something needs changing, tell us and we amend and re-verify it, so it always remains a document we can both defend to an inspector.
What if I need more than one policy?
Most services do. The Statutory Starter Pack covers the twenty policies every CQC-registered service is expected to hold for £495, and the Complete Policy Library covers all 66.
Why CareStream
Policies written the way an inspector expects to read them.
Before you buy
What the document actually looks like.
Every section it contains, and a page of the real thing. We show the structure and the personalisation rather than the wording, because the wording is what you are paying us to write for your service.
Contents of your Food Safety and Allergen Policy
- Purpose and scopewho it covers
- Legal and regulatory frameworkcited in full
- Definitions used in this policy
- Roles and responsibilitiesyour people, named
- Procedure, step by step
- Recording, reporting and escalation
- Training and competency
- Monitoring, audit and review
- Related policies and documents
- Version control and approvalsigned and dated
Section 4 · Roles and responsibilities
Who is accountable, by name
Overall accountability for this policy rests with your registered manager, supported by your nominated individual. Day to day responsibility sits with your named lead, who is the first point of contact for staff at your service address.
The remaining wording is written for the organisation buying it, so it is not shown here.
“The inspector asked for evidence and I had it on screen before she finished the sentence.”
Registered Manager · 48-bed nursing home, West SussexRelated policies
More policies your service may need.
More statutory and operational policies CareStream writes for your service, personalised, human-reviewed and kept updated, exactly like this one.
Safeguarding Adults Policy
Recognising, responding to and reporting abuse and neglect, aligned to the Care Act 2014 and your local authority procedures.
Medicines Management Policy
Ordering, storage, administration, recording and disposal of medicines, including errors and self-administration.
Mental Capacity and DoLS Policy
Capacity assessment, best-interests decisions and deprivation of liberty safeguards under the MCA 2005.
Health and Safety Policy
Your general statement, organisation and arrangements under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.
Infection Prevention and Control Policy
IPC arrangements aligned to the Code of Practice, including audit and cleaning schedules.
Data Protection and GDPR Policy
Lawful handling of personal and special category data under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Compared
The four ways care services get a policy.
We have compared what each approach does rather than naming competitors, because products change and the comparison should still be true next year.
| CareStream | A policy pack | A consultant | A free template | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Questions asked at the point of purchase, so it is personalised rather than blank | ||||
| Written for your service, naming your manager and your leads | ||||
| Structured from the regulations, every required element checked before it is sent | ||||
| A branded companion document setting out the law it was written against | ||||
| Read and approved by a person before it carries your name | ||||
| Prints on your own letterhead with a sign-off and version block | ||||
| Named role holders update everywhere when the person changes | ||||
| Kept current when the law changes, and you are told what changed | ||||
| Turnaround stated before you buy | ||||
| Your staff can ask it questions in their own language | ||||
| What it costs | £39 to £79 per policy, one-off | £250 to £995 for the pack | A day rate, typically £400 upwards | Nothing |
Prices are the published rates of the common alternatives as at September 2026, for comparison only.
Training
Owning the policy is half of it
An inspector asks whether your staff understood it, not whether you hold it. Ninety eight modules written and kept current by us, to the same regulations, from £25.99 per staff member with no subscription.
