Simply Safe & Suitable Records, Digital
Simply Safe & Suitable is MPI's template Food Control Plan — and its record set is exactly what KitchenSorted keeps digital. Fridge temperatures, supplier deliveries, training and sickness, corrective actions: every entry dated, timed and initialled, ready for your next verification visit. Free, on the phone already in your kitchen.
Free forever for the daily diary. No credit card. No hardware.
What is the Simply Safe & Suitable Food Control Plan?
Simply Safe & Suitable (SS&S) is MPI's ready-made template Food Control Plan: instead of writing a custom plan from scratch, a higher-risk food business — a café, restaurant, takeaway or food retailer — registers under MPI's card-based template and runs its kitchen by those cards. It replaced MPI's older "Food Service and Food Retail" template, which was revoked with a transition deadline of 1 February 2024.
Operating under SS&S means two things: doing the checks the cards describe, and keeping records that prove you did. MPI's Record keeping guidance (February 2026) lists the mandatory set — daily fridge/chiller temperature checks, trusted supplier deliveries, staff training and sickness, equipment maintenance (including calibrating your own thermometer), what went wrong and how you fixed it, and customer complaints when they occur. Each record must be accurate, dated, identify who did it, and be kept for at least 4 years (regulations 36 and 37, Food Regulations 2015).
What is the current Simply Safe & Suitable version?
The current version is v39-00005, issued 29 August 2025. MPI's instruction on its Steps to a Simply Safe and Suitable template page was that all food businesses registered under the FCP needed to be working under the new plan by 30 April 2026 — a deadline that has now passed.
v39-00005 added a new "Making biltong" specialist card and made minor changes to several others — checking your plan is working, self-supply water, sourcing and receiving, pest control, hot smoking, and Chinese roast duck. Businesses on v39-00001 or v39-00003 were told to download the full new plan; v39-00004 users could swap in the changed cards or replace the whole plan.
Still on an old version? Update it before your next verification visit — download the current plan free from MPI's Steps page. A superseded plan version is exactly the kind of thing your verifier will raise, and it is an easy fix to make on your own schedule rather than during the visit.
More detail on the update and who needs to act: SS&S v39-00005: are you still on the old template?
What are the SS&S record blanks — and what changed in 2026?
The record blanks are MPI's official blank record sheets for SS&S businesses — the paper (or spreadsheet) forms you fill in each day. MPI refreshed them on 27 February 2026: alongside the PDF there are now editable Word and Excel versions you can adapt to fit how you work, plus new templates for opening and closing checks, internal audit/verification, thermometer checks and calibration, daily cleaning tasks, and biltong records. All are free on MPI's Forms and documents page.
MPI's framing of the change is deliberately low-key: the refresh makes the record blanks easier to use — the recording requirements themselves have not changed. Paper record-keeping remains completely legal and MPI actively maintains these resources. (The old MPI Food Control Plan Diary is a different story: it was retired with the old template — businesses had to move off it by February 2024 — and MPI no longer supplies or promotes it.)
So the honest case against paper is not legality — it is friction. Printing and filing the blanks, chasing a pen that works, hunting through a ring binder for one fridge log from fourteen months ago, then photocopying a stack of pages before a verification visit. KitchenSorted keeps the same records with none of that. Our record blanks guide walks through every current MPI download if paper is where you want to stay.
How KitchenSorted digitises the SS&S record set
Each SS&S record blank has a digital counterpart. Every entry captures the date, time, result and who did it — the exact things regulation 37 requires of a record.
Daily temperature checks
Fridge, chiller and cooking temperatures in a few taps, with out-of-range flags that prompt a corrective action on the spot.
Trusted supplier deliveries
Supplier, food type and quantity, temperature at receipt where applicable — logged as the delivery lands, plus a trusted-supplier directory.
Training & staff sickness
Training records with dates and sign-off, and a sickness log of who was off and when.
When something goes wrong
What happened, how you fixed it, how you will prevent it — linked to the log that triggered it.
Cleaning, opening & closing
MPI's guidance makes recording these optional — but the new 2026 blanks include them for a reason: verifiers move faster when the evidence is there.
Verification pack
Every record above, assembled into a dated PDF for the period your verifier asks about. One click.
The daily diary is free forever. Four years of history, verification packs and reminders live in the paid plan — and your free-plan records are never deleted; they unlock when you upgrade.
See all featuresSimply Safe & Suitable app FAQs
Sources & review
- MPI: Steps to a Simply Safe and Suitable template food control plan
- MPI: Forms and documents for Food Act plans and programmes
- MPI: Record keeping guidance, February 2026 (PDF)
- Food Regulations 2015 (regs 36–37)
Reviewed on 2 August 2026 by the KitchenSorted team. Regulatory pages are re-reviewed quarterly, and immediately when MPI announces template or policy changes. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
This page is general information, not legal or food-safety advice. Always confirm requirements with MPI, your registration authority, or your verifier.
Keep Every SS&S Record in One Place
Start with the free diary today — your records are never deleted, and the verification pack and 4 years of history unlock when you upgrade.