UK Indian restaurant owner convicted of food hygiene infractions, 10 years after similar offences

An Indian restaurant owner will go before a judge for sentencing after he admitted eight breaches of hygiene at his restaurant and take-away kitchen – ten years after he was prosecuted for similar offences.

just.eat.riceMalik Bukhsh of Beatrice Street came before magistrates sitting in Swindon on Monday afternoon charged with eight contraventions of food safety and hygiene at the New Swindon Balti on Cricklade Road including a cooked rice container that was cracked and held together with string, a large box lined with newspaper containing cooked onion bhajis that had been left out overnight, a lack of formal cleaning procedures in place and storing raw and ready to eat foods in the same containers without disinfecting them in between uses.

The court heard that he received around 160 orders through the online takeaway website Just Eat every month, but for the year ending 2015 he only made a profit of a little over £4,000.

Mr Williams pointed out that the previous conviction in 2006 had arisen after Bukhsh had taken a rare holiday and left the business in a family member’s hands, and since then he had rarely taken holiday.

Best Burritoz fined £2,250 for health and safety breaches

Rotting vegetables were found when environmental health officers visited a town centre take-away in Havelock Square, Swindon, U.K.

Owner Ranjit Matharu pleaded guilty to six charges of breaching health and safety regulations.

The offences included: failing to protect food from contamination; failing to keep premises clean, maintained and in good order; and failing to ensure fittings in contact with food were clean and in good working order to avoid risk of contamination.

A series of checks by environmental health officers between 2008 and 2010 discovered decomposing tomatoes and courgettes.

They also found that a number of staff had not been trained in health and safety matters.

Fining Matharu £2,250 and ordering he pay £500 costs, chairman of the bench Geoffrey Earl said: “These are always difficult cases to deal with to reflect the seriousness of an offence, especially as these offences range greatly. We have six matters, three relate directly to actual food offences which affect the quality and the other three relate to errors in the systems in place.”