How to Register as a Food Business in the UK: A Private Chef's Guide

If you cook professionally for clients — in your own kitchen, a client's home, or on the move — you're legally a food business operator, and you need to register with your local authority before you take a single booking. It's free, it can't be refused, and it's easy to get wrong on timing. Here's exactly how it works.

Do private chefs need to register as a food business?

Yes, without exception. UK food law applies to anyone who sells, cooks, stores, handles, prepares or distributes food as part of a business — and it makes no distinction based on business size, structure, or where you work. A sole-trader private chef cooking one dinner party a month has exactly the same legal duty to register as a restaurant chain.

This applies whether you cook in your own home kitchen, a client's kitchen, a hired venue, or out of a van. The guidance from GOV.UK is explicit that registration covers businesses trading "from home," "from a mobile unit," and "from temporary premises" — there's no private-chef exemption because the food is prepared somewhere other than a commercial premises.

When to register — the 28-day rule

You must register with your local authority at least 28 days before you start trading. In practice this means submitting your registration a minimum of four weeks before your first paid booking, not from when you decide to become a private chef.

GOV.UK's own guidance recommends not registering too far in advance either — if your plans change (a different kitchen, a different business structure), you may need to register again. The sensible window is 4–6 weeks before your first job, once your working kitchen and business setup are settled.

If you've already started trading without registering, don't wait for a "better time" — register now. Trading without registration is the offence; a late registration corrects it but doesn't retrospectively excuse a gap.

Which local authority do you register with?

You register with the local authority covering the area where your food business actually operates — in most cases, that's the council covering your home address or the fixed kitchen you use as your operating base, even if the majority of your actual cooking happens at clients' properties.

Where this gets less obvious for private chefs specifically:

• One base kitchen, jobs at various client homes: register once, with the local authority covering your base kitchen. You don't need to separately register with every council area you ever cook a client's dinner in.
• Two fixed premises — for example your own kitchen plus a rented commercial kitchen or shared space you use regularly: each site should be registered with its own local authority, even if that means two registrations.
• No fixed kitchen at all (rare, but possible for chefs who cook exclusively in client-provided kitchens with no home base used for prep or storage): register with the local authority where your business is legally based — typically your home address, since that's where planning, admin, and any food storage or prep still tends to happen.

How to actually register

The process is a short online form, not a formal application:

1. Go to gov.uk/food-business-registration and enter your postcode — this routes you to the correct local authority's form.
2. Fill in your business details: what you do, where you operate from, and your contact information.
3. Submit — there's no fee, and no certificate or licence is issued. You'll typically get an acknowledgement, and the council's food safety team now has you on record.
4. Keep a note of the date you registered, in case you're ever asked to confirm you met the 28-day window.

If you cook in Scotland, registration works slightly differently and is handled through your local authority directly rather than the same GOV.UK routing tool — contact your council's environmental health team to confirm their process.

What happens after you register

Registering puts you on your local authority's radar for a routine food hygiene inspection, carried out by an environmental health officer (EHO). This is usually the first time an EHO will assess your kitchen and paperwork in person, and it's where your Food Hygiene Rating (0–5) gets set. See our guide on what an EHO inspector actually checks for exactly what they'll be looking for.

Registration itself doesn't guarantee a visit on any fixed timetable — some councils inspect new registrations quickly, others take longer depending on resourcing and risk category. Either way, you should be operating exactly as if an inspection could happen tomorrow, from day one.

Do you need a food hygiene certificate to register?

No — a food hygiene certificate isn't a legal prerequisite for registration itself. But UK food law does require that anyone handling food is trained or supervised to a level appropriate to their work, and in practice that means a Level 2 Award in Food Safety in Catering is the baseline an EHO will expect to see for a private chef working alone. It's inexpensive, available online, and typically takes a few hours.

Skipping it doesn't stop you registering, but it's one of the first things an inspector will ask about — and turning up to an inspection with no formal training on record is a common and avoidable mark against you.

Other registrations that go alongside this one

Food business registration is specifically about food safety oversight. A few related registrations are easy to forget because they're handled by entirely different bodies:

• HMRC self-employment — you must register as self-employed with HMRC separately, even if private cheffing is a side income alongside another job.
• Landlord or mortgage lender permission — if you're cooking commercially from a rented or mortgaged home, check your tenancy agreement or mortgage terms permit business use of the kitchen.
• Public liability insurance — not a legal registration, but most clients and venues will expect to see proof of cover before booking you.

What happens if you don't register

Trading as a food business without registering is a criminal offence under the Food Safety Act 1990 and associated regulations. In practice, most councils will ask an unregistered business to register immediately rather than prosecute on a first discovery — but persistent non-compliance, or being unregistered when something goes wrong (a complaint, an illness report), removes any goodwill and significantly increases the risk of formal enforcement action, including fines.

It also means you have no Food Hygiene Rating to show clients, which is itself a quiet red flag to anyone checking before they book you.