The owner of a takeaway restaurant in North East London has been fined nearly £10,000 after breaching food hygiene laws and repeatedly ignoring improvement notices and warnings.
Problems at the Flavour Chicken restaurant in Havering were uncovered during a routine inspection of the premises by environmental health officers from Havering Council back in January 2012. Following another visit a few months later, the Council made it clear to new owner Mohammed Nazakat that he had to make improvements in the following areas:
• Ensuring food is protected from contamination
• Implementing a written food safety management policy
• Ensuring staff had adequate food safety training
• Putting in adequate hand washing facilities
• Ensuring that staff wear aprons
• Cleaning up storage areas, including walls, floors and kitchen equipment
• Improving lighting
Of particular concern was raw chicken being stored next to cooked food, along with a cleaning cloth found to contain enterobacteriaceae, which can cause food poisoning.
When, after further visits, inspectors found that the required improvements still hadn’t been made, the council made the decision to prosecute. Mr Nazakat was ordered to pay £9,350 in fines and £2,600 in court costs.
Commenting on the case, Councillor Lesley Kelly said:
“It is absolutely disgusting that despite so many visits and advice given by our officers this restaurant owner failed to clean up his act and continued to break the law, putting the health and wellbeing of every person who ate there at risk.”
