Guide
Food temperature rules in Scotland: how they differ
Updated
The 8 °C figure is quoted so often that it is easy to assume it is UK law. It is not, and the Scottish schedule is worth reading rather than assuming.
Talk to a specialist The duty is monitoring and records commensurate with your business, not a form somebody sold you.
What gov.uk says
In one sentence: "Chilled food must be kept at 8 °C or below. This is a legal requirement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It's recommended in Scotland" (gov.uk). That is the whole difference in outline, and it matters when you are writing critical limits into a plan.
What the Scottish regulations actually say
Schedule 4 to the Food Hygiene (Scotland) Regulations 2006 makes it an offence to keep food at or in food premises, where a commercial operation is being carried out on it, otherwise than "(a) in a refrigerator or refrigerating chamber or in a cool ventilated place; or (b) at a temperature above 63 °C". The exceptions include food undergoing preparation for sale, food exposed for sale or already sold to a consumer, food being cooled as quickly as possible under hygienic conditions after cooking, and food which for the duration of its shelf life may be kept at ambient temperature with no risk to health.
Reheating food: the temperature Scotland sets and England does not
Paragraph 3 of the Scottish schedule: food which has been heated in the course of a commercial operation and is then reheated before being served for immediate consumption or exposed for sale "shall, on being reheated, be raised to a temperature of not less than 82 °C". Contravening that is an offence, with a defence where the food could not have been raised to 82 °C without a deterioration of its qualities. The England regulations contain no reheating temperature at all.
What this means for your records
- Do not simply copy an English log sheet. A Scottish hot temperature record needs a reheating column with Scotland's reheating temperature, 82 °C, as its limit.
- An 8 °C target is still sensible in Scotland, and gov.uk recommends it. Setting it as your own critical limit is a legitimate choice, but write it into your plan as your limit rather than describing it as the law.
- Use CookSafe's own forms. Food Standards Scotland publishes a records section with a Cold Food Record, Hot Temperature Record, Hot Holding Record, Delivery Record and Off Site Temperature Record, which are already shaped for the Scottish rules.
- The UK-wide layer is unchanged. Retained Regulation (EC) 852/2004 applies in Scotland exactly as it does in England: HACCP principles, monitoring at critical control points, records commensurate with the size of the business, and an uninterrupted cold chain.
If you operate across the border, the practical answer is one set of critical limits set to the strictest applicable rule in each nation: 8 °C chilled, 63 °C hot holding, 82 °C on reheat. Two sets of paperwork is how gaps appear.