Scores on the Doors is a new initiative by the Food Standards Agency to enable diners to access health and hygiene ratings online.
In theory it’s a fine idea, but we all know just how good the government is at database projects, and this seems to be a classic example. Indeed, the execution of the idea so far is so poor that it doesn’t give one great confidence in the underlying data. Search London restaurants for ‘poule au pot’ for example (a nice ‘unique’ sort of name, we thought), and you get 1228 results. (We couldn’t actually be bothered to page through them to see if one of them actually was the Poule au Pot, of course.)
With enormous difficulty, we did extract the names of a few establishments that don’t seem to be performing so well. Recipients of one star – “Poor level of compliance with food safety legislation–much more effort required” – included: Andrew Edmunds W1, Admiralty W1 and (something of a shock result) La Trompette W4.
We‘re sure there’s lots more interesting stuff, but the system is so user-unfriendly that we gave up on looking for it. Why invest a lot of money in a scheme, and then make its results all but unattainable?
We raised this concern with yourlondon.gov.uk, who replied with impressive speed. Scores on the Doors “is still at pilot stage”, they say, “so there may be opportunities to enhance and modify some features for a later version of the application”.
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