The National Archives (legislation.gov.uk)

Authority

Statutory authority

Territories

GB

Primacy

primary

Commercial interest

none

Retrieved

2026-08-13

State

Read and citable

Original document

The instrument itself rather than a restatement of it, which matters because every secondary account of '63 °C' omits something. Paragraph 6 makes it an offence to keep, at food premises, below 63 °C, food that has been cooked or reheated and needs to be kept hot. Paragraph 7(2) supplies a defence where the food 'had been kept for service or on display for sale for a period of less than two hours; and had not previously been kept for service or on display for sale by that person' — so the two hours is a once-only concession for food that has ALREADY fallen below the floor, not a permitted holding time at it. Paragraph 7(1) allows a well-founded scientific assessment instead. England only; Wales and Northern Ireland have parallel instruments and Scotland's regime differs.

Safety, Technical

• Explicitly not culinary practice: A temperature-control regulation says nothing about whether food is any good. Reading a permitted duration as a quality window is the exact conflation this catalogue sets out to prevent.

• “Any person who...keeps at...food premises at a temperature below 63°C any food which...has been cooked or reheated and needs to be kept at or above 63°C...commits an offence.”

  Schedule 4 paragraph 6 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013 makes it an offence to keep, at food premises, at a temperature below 63 °C, food which has been cooked or reheated and needs to be kept at or above 63 °C. Paragraph 7(2) provides a defence where the food had been kept for service or on display for sale for less than two hours and had not previously been so kept by that person.

  Safety regime:

  Retail and food service. The obligation is on a person keeping food AT FOOD PREMISES, which is not a garden.

  The two hours in paragraph 7(2) is a once-only defence for food that has already fallen BELOW 63 °C. It is not a permitted holding duration at the floor, and reading it as one is the most common error in secondary accounts of this rule.

  Where it applies:

  England. Wales and Northern Ireland have parallel instruments and Scotland's regime differs, so the rule is not 'the UK rule' however often it is described as one.

  The instrument says nothing whatever about whether the food is worth eating after any period.