Guide
How long must you keep food temperature records?
Updated
Search this question and you will be told three months, six months, a year and two years, usually with confidence and no source. The law does not say any of them.
What the law says
Retained Regulation (EC) 852/2004, Article 5(4) is the whole of it. Food business operators shall: "(a) provide the competent authority with evidence of their compliance with paragraph 1 in the manner that the competent authority requires, taking account of the nature and size of the food business; (b) ensure that any documents describing the procedures developed in accordance with this Article are up-to-date at all times; (c) retain any other documents and records for an appropriate period." That is the only retention duty the hygiene regulations impose on your temperature records, and "an appropriate period" is not a number.
What FSA guidance says
The FSA's current Safer Food, Better Business guidance does not give a period either. It gives a trigger: "Store all your completed diary pages safely until your next visit from a local authority food safety officer. This can be done electronically or with printed copies. They may want to look at your diary pages as well as your SFBB pack" (FSA on gov.uk, published 5 June 2025). Because inspection intervals depend on your risk rating, that trigger can be a long way out for a low-risk business.
We are deliberately not publishing a retention figure of our own. If you have seen one quoted with authority, check whether the page cites anything. Several widely copied figures come from older versions of guidance packs rather than from the regulations.
How to set a period you can defend
- Start from the shelf life. Records that relate to product still in circulation are obviously current. A period shorter than your longest shelf life is hard to defend.
- Cover the inspection cycle. The FSA trigger is the next local authority visit, so ask your local food safety team what interval your rating puts you on and keep at least that.
- Cover the incident window. gov.uk: "If your business is involved in a food safety incident, you will need to show your records as evidence of how you keep food safe." Complaints and illness reports do not always arrive the same week.
- Check your other obligations. Traceability, due diligence defence under the hygiene regulations, supplier contracts and third-party audit schemes such as BRCGS routinely require longer retention than the hygiene regulations do. Those are usually what actually sets the period in a manufacturing business.
- Write the period into your system. The defensible position is a stated retention period in your food safety management system with a reason attached, not a filing cabinet that happens to hold two years of paper.
Electronic is fine
The FSA states the diary can be kept electronically or on printed copies. Nothing in the hygiene regulations requires paper. What an electronic system has to be able to do is produce the records when an officer asks, which in practice means an export you can hand over rather than a login you have to give away.