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Food Hygiene Training for Staff Who Don’t Speak English Well
UK law doesn’t say food hygiene training has to be in English. It says your staff must be supervised and instructed or trained to a level that suits their work, and HSE says the information you give them has to be something they can actually understand. For many kitchens, that means training in the language people think in.
Walk into almost any busy UK kitchen and you’ll hear more than one language. That’s normal, and it’s a strength. But it raises a fair question for owners and managers: if a member of your team isn’t confident reading English, how do you make sure they’ve really understood food safety, and how do you prove it to an inspector?
What the law says
Food hygiene law (Regulation 852/2004, as kept in UK law) says food businesses must make sure food handlers are “supervised and instructed and/or trained in food hygiene matters commensurate with their work activity”. That’s the whole requirement. It doesn’t mention a certificate, and it doesn’t mention a language.
GOV.UK adds the practical part: “You must be able to show that your staff have the right skills and up-to-date training for their role”, and you should keep a record of the training they’ve done so you can show it during an inspection. It also confirms that food handlers don’t have to hold a food hygiene certificate. Training can come from a course, on-the-job training, self-study or relevant experience.
What HSE says about language
The Health and Safety Executive is more direct. Its guidance for employers says:
“Employers have a duty to provide comprehensible information to workers. This does not have to be in writing or even necessarily in English, as long as work instructions, risks, safety measures and emergency procedures are clearly communicated to all workers.”
HSE’s guidance is about health and safety, but the principle carries straight across to food hygiene. Training nobody understood isn’t training.
Why training in someone’s own language works better
- Nothing gets lost in the detail. The difference between 5°C and 8°C, or 48 hours and 24, is exactly the kind of thing a second-language reader can misread.
- When people aren’t confident, they nod and guess rather than ask. Training in their own language removes the guessing.
- It shows respect, and staff who feel respected tend to stay.
There’s a balance to strike, though. Your team still needs to recognise the English words used on your labels, rotas and signs: “use by”, “allergen”, “raw”. Good training does both. It explains the idea in the learner’s language and makes sure they know the English word they’ll see at work.
Practical ways to make training stick
HSE suggests several approaches, and they work well in kitchens:
- A buddy system: pair a new starter with an experienced colleague who shares their language.
- Pictures, signs and symbols: colour-coded boards, hazard symbols and picture posters need no translation. Our free kitchen posters are designed for this, and many come in 15 languages.
- Plain, simple English from supervisors, with supervisors trained to check understanding rather than asking “all OK?”
- Show, then watch: demonstrate the task, then watch the person do it. Handwashing, probing and cleaning are easy to check this way.
How to check it’s really been understood
- Ask the person to show you, not tell you: “Show me how you’d check this chicken is cooked.”
- Ask open questions (“What do you do if you’re sick in the night?”) rather than yes/no ones.
- Use a short test in their own language, then keep the result.
- Write the training on each person’s staff training record: what, when and how you checked.
How we do it
Our food safety courses are available in 15 languages, including Polish, Romanian, Urdu, Bengali and Arabic. Each language has its own lessons, practice games and tests. The certificate is always issued in English, on purpose: the person who reads it is usually an inspector or a manager in the UK, and it should mean the same thing whichever language the course was taken in.
If you’re a local authority, charity or school organising training for a group, we also run on-site training in the North West.
Try a course in your team’s language
Pick any of our 15 languages and try the lessons and questions from our catering course free. No card needed.
See the 15 languages →Frequently asked questions
Does food hygiene training have to be in English?
No UK law says so. The law requires training that suits the person’s work, and HSE says the information you give staff must be something they can understand, which doesn’t have to be in English.
Is a certificate in another language valid?
A certificate isn’t legally required at all. What matters is that you can show the training happened and was understood. Ours are issued in English whatever language the course was taken in, so an inspector can read them.
What if a member of staff can’t read well in any language?
Use demonstration, pictures and a buddy, and check understanding by watching them do the task. Record what you covered and how you checked.
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