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How to report a restaurant that got your allergy wrong

Published 21 October 2026

If you are ill, or you think someone is having an allergic reaction, get medical help before you think about a complaint. GOV.UK says to get medical help immediately, and the NHS steps are in what to do if you have an allergic reaction in a restaurant: call 999 if you think it is anaphylaxis, and use an adrenaline auto-injector if the person has one. Reporting a business does not treat a reaction. This page is for afterwards, when you want the food safety team to know that allergen information was missing or wrong.

Tell the business, then the council

The Food Standards Agency’s consumer advice says that if you have had an allergic, intolerance or coeliac reaction, or a near miss, contact the food business first so they know. If you want further action, contact the food safety team of the local authority responsible for that business. GOV.UK says the same thing in shorter form: tell the business, and you can also report a food safety issue to your local council’s food safety team.

The team that matters is the one for the area where the business is, which is not always the council you live in. Our city guides name the local picture for London, where it can be a borough team, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Those pages are a map of who inspects. They are not a form, and they do not guarantee what action a council will take. The council decides that.

The Food Standards Agency tool

For a business, the Food Standards Agency runs a service to report a food safety or hygiene issue. You report it to the local authority where the business is located. The food safety team considers the complaint and decides what to do. The service gives you a way to email that team or to use the council’s own website.

You will need the full UK postcode of the food business. The Food Standards Agency says addresses and partial postcodes will not be recognised, and it gives the example of a postcode written without a space, such as SW1H9EX. Look at the bill, the menu footer or the door if you do not have it in your head. Unavailable or incorrect allergen information is one of the things the service says you can report, alongside problems such as suspected food poisoning or food sold past its use-by date.

It helps if you can also say the name and address of the business, the date, what you ordered, what you told them about your allergy, what you were told back, and what happened. That is so the team can see the incident. It is not a legal formula, and you do not have to write like a solicitor. Keep any label, receipt or photograph you already have. Do not go back into an unsafe situation to collect them.

What this route is not for

The Food Standards Agency says complaints about poor-quality food and poor customer service should go to the business or the ordering platform. That includes problems with payments and refunds, and a takeaway that was late, incorrect or missing. For consumer rights, it points you to Citizens Advice. A rude evening and a missing allergen answer are different problems. You can tell the business about both. Only the allergen information, or a hygiene problem, belongs with the food safety team.

Allergy alerts are different again. The Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland publish alerts when allergen information on a food product is missing or wrong and the product may be recalled. You can sign up for those alerts. They are about products on sale, not a substitute for reporting the restaurant you ate in tonight. A recall of a packaged sauce does not investigate your table. Your table needs the local team.

Scotland

Food Standards Scotland says that concerns about food safety, hygiene, a Food Hygiene Information Scheme rating, or a complaint about a food business should go to your local authority. That includes a specific restaurant. Consumers report a food incident by contacting the local authority. The Food Standards Agency is the food body for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Food Standards Scotland is the body in Scotland.

If you think labelling has missing or misleading information, including allergens, ingredients or descriptions, Food Standards Scotland asks you to email LabellingStandardsandRegulatedProducts@fss.scot. Use that for a labelling concern. For the business itself, still contact the local authority where it sits. The Scottish Food Crime Hotline is a separate route, for suspected food crime, and it is not the right door for an ordinary allergen mistake or a missing answer at the table. Urgent food-safety incidents have their own out-of-hours number for incidents. If you are a member of the public and someone is unwell, the medical emergency number is still 999.

What you are reporting

You are reporting that you could not get accurate allergen information, or that the information you were given was wrong. Restaurants have to provide that information for the 14 allergens. On food packed before you chose it, Natasha’s Law means a full ingredients list. On a plate cooked to order, the information can be written or spoken, with a signpost if it is spoken. A business does not have to cook you a different meal. It does have to be able to tell you what is in the food it sells. How to tell a restaurant is the conversation we try first. Reporting is for when that information was not there, or was not true.

If the food that was missed was peanut, mustard, gluten or sesame, the guides for peanut, mustard, gluten and sesame explain what a kitchen should have been able to answer. Naming the food clearly in your report helps the team see what was missed. Do not exaggerate, and do not guess at ingredients you were not told about. Say what you asked, what you heard, and what then happened.

We cannot tell you that a report will produce a fine, a prosecution or a new rating. Those outcomes are for the authority, on the facts. What we can say is that unavailable or incorrect allergen information is explicitly something the Food Standards Agency tells the public they can report. If you are choosing somewhere else later, you can find restaurants for a food allergy and search on the SafePlate homepage. Searching SafePlate is free. The usable allergy chef card, in 38 languages, is part of SafePlate Plus. The allergy chef card page is a preview for people who are not on Plus. A card is a way to be clear next time. It is not the report, and it is not medical treatment.

Set up your foods before you search. This is not medical advice. Confirm the meal with the kitchen. In the UK, if you think someone is having anaphylaxis, call 999.