Four Salisbury-area businesses recently received one-out-of-five Food Hygiene Ratings from the Food Standards Agency.

Stoby’s Fish & Chips on Butchers Row in Salisbury, The Green Dragon pub in Alderbury, King Fish in Durrington and King’s Wok on Fisherton Street in Salisbury all received a score of one.

Food hygiene ratings provide scores based on performance in three categories- hygienic food handling, cleanliness and condition of facilities and building, and management of food safety.

In the category of hygienic food handling King Fish and The Green Dragon received ratings of “Improvement necessary,” while Stoby’s and King’s Wok both received ratings of “Generally satisfactory.”

In the category of cleanliness and condition of facilities and building, King Fish received a rating of “Improvement necessary” while the other three restaurants received ratings of “Generally satisfactory.”

The category of management of food safety is where all four restaurants faired poorly, receiving ratings of “Major improvement necessary.” According to the Food Standards Agency’s website, this category measures “system or checks in place to ensure that food sold or served is safe to eat, evidence that staff know about food safety, and the food safety officer has confidence that standards will be maintained in the future.” Poor filing and record keeping practices can often damage this rating.

Jeff Hill, landlord of The Green Dragon, said the low rating was a result of substandard filing and that all issues had been resolved, with the restaurant anticipating a reinspection very soon.

He said: “One of the parts was our filing wasn’t up to date.

“It’s nothing to do with pests or anything else like that.”

Suley Annak, manager of King Fish, said the inspector arrived during opening time before employees had organised the shop for the day.

He said: “At the time, we were opening up the shop so the shop wasn’t in the best way possible. There were like potato bags lying around and stuff like that.

“We had some paperwork missing, as well.

“As far as I know we’ve done all of it.”

Suley added that the rating is the lowest the shop has received since he became manager eight years ago and the shop is awaiting reinspection.

He said: “Last time it was a four, as far as I remember.”

Yifan Xie, manager of Stoby’s Fish & Chips, said the businesses’ inspection took place before a recent change in management and the problems have been addressed with the restaurant awaiting reinspection.

King’s Wok was unavailable for comment at the time of this article.