Pandemic-era licence lapses (2020-2021)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many restaurants and food programs let health licences lapse as they closed or paused service. Regulators tracked these lapses on the same active-list model Kent County uses.
Licences dropped off active lists across the country, often temporarily.
A lapsed licence came to be treated as a paperwork issue resolved by re-inspection, not a verdict on a business.
It shows a licence missing from an active list signals a possible closure, not a confirmed one — the ambiguity that defines this story.
