The hygiene scores of all food businesses in Wales will be available to the public in about six months, the South Wales Echo can reveal.

Star ratings from zero to five allocated under the Food Standards Agency’s scores-on-the-doors scheme will be listed on a single website.

The move is in response to increasing public pressure to make caterers more accountable in the wake of South Wales’ deadly E.coli O157 outbreak.

It will mean that for the first time, consumers will have the ability to choose to eat or buy their food from the most hygienic businesses.

Sharon Mills, mum of South Wales five-year-old Mason Jones who died after contracting E.coli in 2005, told the Echo the development was an important step forward in the fight to make food safer.

But she said she was disappointed the businesses themselves would not be forced to display the star ratings on their premises.

Watchdog Consumer Focus Wales also called on the Food Standards Agency to pursue a change in legislation to make it compulsory for food businesses to display their scores in a hard-hitting report published last month on the lack of progress in making food safer following the E.coli outbreak.