Every restaurant in the country - from the finest Michelin star establishments to the local corner café - is to be graded with a cleanliness rating, in an offensive by the food standards watchdog.

Customers will be able to check on everything from mice droppings to cookers caked in grease as hygiene levels in the kitchens of all restaurants are detailed on the internet.

Restaurant owners will also be asked to display their hygiene record on the premises as part of the "scores on the doors" offensive being promoted by the Food Standards Agency.

If the "scores on the doors" take-up is poor, laws are planned to force owners to disclose their rankings at the restaurant.

The move by the watchdog is aimed at bringing down the number of food poisoning cases in Britain and to give consumers more information to help to decide where they eat out.

Dame Deirdre Hutton, chairman of the agency, is determined to open up the secret inspection regime of food premises inspections, which are carried out by local authority enforcement officers. In most areas people can only discover the truth about their favourite eating places by making an application under freedom of information laws. A formal pilot programme supervised by the watchdog is to start in the new year and a nationwide system is to be approved within 12 months.

It is intended that a single web-site will contain the details of every restaurant and cafés kitchen hygiene record, but it is still undecided whether actual star ratings or a system based on points will be used to identify the best and worst restaurants.

Both scoring systems will be used in the trial, which will cover every restaurant in London - from the Ritz and the Savoy to fast-food chains McDonald's and Burger King - and all food outlets in Coventry, Derby, Hull, Leicester, Stoke and Nottingham.

There are separate pilot schemes in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Swansea and Belfast.

Once the hygiene scores are established, restaurants may then be graded in terms of the nutritional value of food on the menu. Diners may be able to find out whether trans fats or monosodium glutamate were used in their fast-food or haute cuisine.

Hygiene ratings already exist in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The agency is now convinced that public cleanliness rankings will improve food safety and reduce incidents of poisoning - half of which occur from eating out and the rest from hospitals, care homes and schools.

Dame Deirdre, in an interview with The Times, said: “Five hundred people a year are still dying of food poisoning. It is quite a significant figure. We have set ourselves a target to reduce food-borne illnesses by 20 per cent, and in 18 months we have achieved 19.2 per cent.”

She said that this represented 1.5 million fewer cases of food poisoning and had saved the national economy £750 million in days otherwise lost through absenteeism. There are usually about 100,000 food-poisoning cases reported to GPs each year but health chiefs said that this is only 10 per cent of the real figure, as most people do not seek medical treatment.

Dame Deirdre is determined that the agency must do even more to reduce the number of cases. “If you take your eye off the ball you can get significant illness and death,” she said.

Some local authorities are already giving consumers information about the cleanliness of their local restaurants and the threat of being “named and shamed” has improved hygiene standards.

Camden Council, in North London, was the first in the country to do so from June last year, and hygiene scores have since risen by 15 per cent in the borough’s 1,200 restaurants. The number of restaurants that had satisfactory inspections was 65 per cent in 2004-05 but in the 12 months from June 2005 this had risen to 80 per cent.

The best restaurants score three stars for excellent, with two stars indicating that they are very good, one star good and no stars “major improvements are needed”. Most establishments are inspected once a year, although high risk outlets can expect a visit every six months. Under the new scheme it is planned that in-spections will be unannounced.

Sue Davies, senior food policy adviser at Which?, the consumer organisation, said: “This is something we have been campaigning for for years. This move will raise standards and reduce cases of food poisoning. We also need to improve nutritional standards in restaurants, but the focus now should be scores on the doors.”

Dame Deirdre also told The Times that it was possible that nutritional ranking of restaurants could follow from the hygiene scheme. She said: “My guess is that there will be some correlation between hygiene and nutritional standards and it may be possible to extend the hygiene scheme to nutritional standards.”

Dame Deirdre added, however, that she did not believe the campaign against trans fats — linked to higher blood pressure and heart disease — that is being waged in the US was relevant to the UK. She said that she knew of no city wishing to follow the example of New York, which has banned trans fats from restaurants. “The biggest issue in the UK is about saturated fats, not trans fats. If you push people to take out trans fats if you are not careful they will replace them with saturated fats that makes the problem worse. We believe trans fats will die of their own accord,” she said.

Check list

- Food hygiene and safety

- Method of handling food

- Structural conditions of the premises

- Cleaning and disinfecting of work surfaces and knives

- Temperature control

- Storage of food

- Staff hygiene training

- State of cleanliness

- State of repair

- Confidence in the management

- Good access to technical advice

- Food safety risk assessment in place

Source: Ollie Oxenham, operational manager Camden Council food safety team

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