Six in ten Barnet food businesses hold five stars and just two hold zero. But 393 have never been inspected, and 107 carry a rating awarded in 2021 or earlier.

Barnet Council is the food authority for 2,882 premises, and the picture on its register is better than the headlines about zero ratings usually suggest. Of the 2,368 that currently carry a numeric rating, 1,445 hold a five, the top mark. That is 61.0%. Two hold a zero.

We pulled the whole Barnet register from the Food Standards Agency on 1 September 2026. Here is what it shows.

Rating Premises Share
5, very good 1,445 61.0%
4, good 572 24.2%
3, generally satisfactory 220 9.3%
2, improvement necessary 85 3.6%
1, major improvement necessary 44 1.9%
0, urgent improvement necessary 2 0.1%

A further 393 premises are awaiting inspection, which means they are on the register but have not yet been visited, and 121 are exempt, usually low-risk places like a shop selling only pre-packed goods.

Every August inspection scored five

Eight Barnet premises were given a rating in August, and all eight scored five:

  • Habiba’s Smokehouse, 1179 Finchley Road NW11
  • Oasis Snack Ltd, a mobile caterer in NW4
  • N3 Indian Tandoor & Bar, 12 Long Lane N3
  • Gs Beez, a manufacturer and packer in N12
  • Tapuach / Sushi Fix, 108 Brent Street NW4
  • The Railway Bell, 13 East Barnet Road, Barnet EN4
  • Anemone Patisserie, in NW7
  • Complete Sports, the caterer at Ashmole Academy on Cecil Road, N14, which Barnet inspects as food authority

One caveat on that. The newest rating anywhere on Barnet’s register is dated 18 August, so the FSA has not yet published everything the council did last month. Eight is not the real August total, and it will rise. For comparison, the council had ratings published for 139 premises in July, 152 in June and 172 in May.

The two zeros, and what a zero actually means

Two premises in the borough currently hold a zero:

  • Coffee Mate / Baba Wali, 131 West Hendon Broadway NW9 7DY, rated 27 May 2026.
  • Hendon Rugby Football Club, Greenlands Lane NW4 1RL, rated 6 December 2025.

Both were scored identically: 15 for hygienic food handling, 20 for the condition of the structure, and 20 for confidence in management. In this scheme the scores work backwards, so a higher number is worse. Zero is the best possible score in each category, and the totals are what produce the overall rating.

A rating is a snapshot of one inspection on one date, and both of these are months old. A business that disagrees with its rating can appeal to the council that issued it. The FSA notes in its own data guidance that while an appeal is being determined, the entry shows “Awaiting Publication” instead of a score (FSA open data notes). Neither of the two above is showing that, so neither rating is currently under appeal.

A further 44 premises hold a one, so 46 in the borough sit at one or zero, just under 2% of everything rated. The most recent were rated in early July: Maramur Bakery on Watford Way NW4, the cafe in Mill Hill Park on Wise Lane, Hyderabadi Dum Biryani on West Hendon Broadway NW9, and Kabul Kebab Restaurant on High Street, Edgware.

Mill Hill does best, Colindale worst

Split by postcode district, the gap across the borough is 24 percentage points.

Area Rated premises Hold a 5 Share
NW7 Mill Hill 179 134 74.9%
N12 North Finchley 237 156 65.8%
EN5 Barnet 240 155 64.6%
N2 East Finchley 121 78 64.5%
EN4 East Barnet 110 69 62.7%
N11 Friern Barnet 67 41 61.2%
N3 Finchley 200 119 59.5%
HA8 Edgware 265 157 59.2%
NW4 Hendon 245 144 58.8%
N20 Whetstone 126 73 57.9%
NW11 Golders Green 203 113 55.7%
NW9 Colindale 156 80 51.3%

Read that carefully before drawing conclusions about any one high street. A postcode district is not a neighbourhood, several of these straddle borough boundaries, and the mix of business types differs between them. NW7 has a high share of schools and care homes, which are inspected often and tend to score well.

The bigger gap is time, not scores

The number that should give a resident more pause than the two zeros is this: 432 premises in Barnet still carry a rating awarded in 2023 or earlier. Within that, 107 were last rated in 2021 or before, including 11 whose rating dates from 2019. The oldest live rating on the borough’s register was awarded on 29 April 2019.

Add the 393 awaiting inspection and 825 of the borough’s 2,882 premises, 29%, are either unvisited or carrying a rating awarded in 2023 or earlier. A five awarded in 2019 tells you what an inspector found seven years ago, under whatever ownership the business had then.

What it means for you

Look at the date, not just the score. A sticker in a window shows a rating but not when it was earned, and on this register the gap runs from last month to 2019. The current rating for any business is free to look up on the FSA’s search, and every record carries its inspection date next to the score.

A five from July 2026 and a five from 2019 are not the same piece of information. If a place you use has not been inspected since before the pandemic, that is not a mark against it, but it does mean the rating is not telling you much about the kitchen today.

If you think somewhere is unsafe, the report goes to Barnet Council’s environmental health team rather than to the FSA, because the council is the authority that inspects and rates. Complaints are what most often trigger an inspection outside the normal cycle.

Sources

Figures were calculated from the Food Standards Agency’s Barnet register on 1 September 2026 and change as inspections are published. A rating reflects the conditions found at one visit on one date. Related: Barnet planning applications and Barnet bin collection days.