Legal surgery
Graeme Cushion, partner at licensing solicitors Poppleston Allen, is here
to answer another selection of your food legislation questions
Q I've just had a visit from environmental health officers (EHOs) who claim to have found mouse droppings beneath work surfaces in my kitchen. I have been served with a prohibition notice and told that I cannot use my kitchen. What should I do?
Graeme says: There are several implications to consider and it would be prudent to seek immediate legal advice. Engage a pest-control company to come and investigate the situation. They will have experience in identifying what is and is not mouse droppings. They will also be able to advise on any remedial action that you can take to prevent rodents accessing your kitchen.
Arguably, this ought to have been part of your due diligence in any event, but you must engage such services now if they are not already part of your regular routine.
The prohibition notice itself stops you using the kitchen until you are given the all-clear by the EHO on re-inspection. On the paperwork given to you as part of the notice, there ought to be a date of hearing when the EHO will seek to ratify his decision with a magistrate.
You can attend that hearing if you wish, to give your side of the story, but if the offending items were mouse droppings, then the order is likely to be upheld for your kitchen to reopen only when the problem has been solved.
You may also be prosecuted. This will start with an interview under caution, where it is essential that you are legally represented. This is the first part of the investigative process and the officers will be seeking evidence to support future prosecution. Financial penalties can be very high for breaches of food-safety legislation and the damage to reputation should not be underestimated.
Q The water supply to my kitchen has been temporarily cut off due to some repairs that are being carried out in the area. Do I need to close my kitchen for the duration?
Graeme says: It is an essential part of hygiene in your kitchen that your staff are able to wash not only their own hands, but also any equipment that they are using.
I would imagine that you would have extreme difficulty in continuing to operate your kitchen in the absence of a water supply. However, if you are able to make alternative arrangements to have a temporary water supply installed, then you may be able to minimise the damage to your business as a result of this problem.
You should obviously make contact with those involved in making the repairs to determine exactly how long the problem will take to rectify and explain the importance of a speedy resolution from the point of view of maintaining your business.
Don't let hygiene slip
You might think that advising you to ensure your kitchen is as hygienic as possible is stating the obvious, to say the least.
However, recent experience has taught me that standards do slip, even with the best possible intentions, and that the deterioration in standards of cleanliness and hygiene can be very rapid indeed.
You would never imagine that standards would be likely to slip in premises where food is the core business. However, even there, the marketplace can change surprisingly swiftly and you may find that food sales are no longer as predominant as they once were.
You may find it necessary to lay off kitchen staff in order to keep overheads to a minimum. Before you know it, regular cleaning of the kitchen and associated inspections may have tailed off, if not faded out altogether. This is a scenario to beware.
Poppleston Allen is a leading
UK licensing practitioner
