Food Business Registration – 28-Day Pre-Trading Requirement (UK)
🔴 CriticalEvery UK food business must register with the local authority at least 28 days before trading under the Food Premises (Registration) Regulations 1991. Free, cannot be refused, but must be built into the launch sequence for each London location.
Recommended Action
Immediate Action
A legal deadline is live or an obligation is already triggered. Act now.
Risk Scores
Priority Score = Business Impact + Legal Complexity + Urgency. Maximum is 15. Confidence is not included in the score — it reflects how reliable the source is.
Critical — could block market entry entirely or create major liability
Moderate — a lawyer should review this before action
Immediate — a deadline is live or the obligation is already triggered
Primary law — a statute, regulation, or official government publication
Critical — address immediately
Source
UK Food Standards Agency — Starting a Food Business →Tier 1 Source
Primary legal source — a statute, regulation, or official government publication. Highest reliability.
Signal Currency
How current is this signal? The gap between when it was published and when it was added here tells you whether you're looking at breaking news or established law.
Publication date unknown
Added to dashboard: 9 June 2026 (87 days ago)
Citation & Practice Notes
Specific statute, regulation, or case law supporting this signal, plus practical notes on sequencing, timing, or related obligations.
Food Premises (Registration) Regulations 1991, S.I. 1991/2825. Free and cannot be refused but timing is critical.
How to read this signal
Where it comes from
Every signal starts from a named source, tiered by how close it sits to the authority that actually decides the question. A Tier 1 source is the regulator, legislature or court itself. Lower tiers are reporting about those bodies, useful for noticing a development early but not for settling what the rule is. The source is linked above so the underlying document can be read directly rather than taken on trust.
What the four scores mean
Business impact, legal complexity, urgency and confidence are scored separately because they move independently. A settled rule can be high impact and low complexity; a fast-moving proposal can be urgent and low confidence at once. Confidence tracks how firmly the underlying position is established, so a low confidence score is a statement about the state of the evidence rather than a hedge about the analysis.
What the counsel flag is for
The outside counsel flag marks signals where the next step turns on a judgement a qualified lawyer in that jurisdiction should make: an obligation whose trigger is genuinely contested, a deadline with consequences attached, or a question where national implementation diverges from the headline rule. It is a routing instruction, not a severity rating.
This tracker is independent analysis published under RN Collins' own byline. It is not commissioned or endorsed by any company named in it. Where an official source has been moved or withdrawn by the body that published it, the link above points to that body's current page for the same material.