A guide for your Environmental Health Officer
This article is written for the Environmental Health Officer (EHO) inspecting a business that uses Seito to keep its food safety records. It explains what Seito is, how records are captured and stored, and how to ask the operator for the evidence you need. Operators: feel free to email or print this page for your inspecting officer.
What Seito is
Seito is a digital food safety management system used by UK food businesses to replace paper diaries. It is aligned with the FSA's Safer Food, Better Business (England & Wales), CookSafe (Scotland) and Safe Catering (Northern Ireland) frameworks. The business selects their region at onboarding and the recording structure follows accordingly.
What is recorded
Daily opening/closing checks, fridge and freezer temperatures, cooking and cooling temperatures, cleaning schedules (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly), deliveries, periodic checks (pest control, calibration, equipment), allergen matrices, staff return-to-work declarations, and a full corrective Action Log for anything that fell out of spec.
How records are timestamped and attributed
Every record stores the server-side date and time it was created, the name (and where signed-in, the user account) of the person who logged it, and the site it was logged against. Records cannot be silently back-dated. There is a 5-second client-side undo for accidental taps; beyond that, removing an entry leaves an audit trace.
How corrective actions are tracked
When a temperature is out of range, a delivery is rejected, or a cleaning task is missed, Seito automatically raises an entry in the Action Log. The action records what happened, what the staff member did about it, and who resolved it and when. The Compliance Report's 'Actions Summary' shows raised-vs-resolved counts with links straight through to the originating record.
How to request records for a specific period
Ask the manager to open the 'Compliance Report' for the site, set the date range you want (e.g. last 4 weeks, last 3 months) and walk you through the score, the daily trend, and the 'Gaps & Issues' table. Each row links to the underlying temperature reading, cleaning log, or delivery. A downloadable inspection pack (PDF) is on the roadmap — until then the on-screen report is the canonical view.
Closed days and ad-hoc records
The business sets its weekly opening days and one-off closures (e.g. bank holidays, refurb). Closed days are excluded from the compliance score so they don't artificially deflate it. Records logged on a closed day (spot checks, deep cleans) are kept and visible in the audit trail but flagged as ad-hoc.
Data integrity & retention
Records are stored in an encrypted cloud database hosted in the EU. Row-level security ensures staff only see their own business's data. Records are retained for the lifetime of the subscription and can be exported on request. Seito does not delete historical records when tasks or areas are renamed — the original wording is preserved on the log.
Allergen information
If the business uses Seito's allergen module, each menu item has a 14-allergen matrix. The manager can show you the live matrix on screen or share a public-facing link/QR code that customers can scan. Changes to the matrix are timestamped.
Tips
- If you'd like records sent ahead of the visit, ask the operator to screenshot or screen-share the Compliance Report for the period you're interested in.
- The Action Log is usually the fastest way to verify that issues are being managed — it shows the problem, the fix, and the timestamps in one place.
- Questions about the system itself (rather than this business's records) can be sent to support@seito.app.