Steakhouse fined £50k for serving food on dirty wooden boards
A Birmingham steakhouse has been fined £50,000 for serving food on dirty wooden boards that gave 14 people food poisoning.
Birmingham City Council dished out the hefty £50K fine this week to Ibrahim’s Grill and Steak House after a party of 14 was struck down with food poisoning in October 2016.
Following the outbreak, inspectors were sent to the restaurant in Acocks Green, who found the venue to be poorly cleaned and sanitising chemicals misused.
The biggest issue was the ongoing use of damaged wooden boards that were incapable of being properly cleaned in place of plates.
The steakhouse entered a guilty plea to Birmingham magistrates’ court for failing to comply with a hygiene improvement notice by continuing to use the wooden boards.
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The restaurant was fined £50,000 and told to pay £670 costs along with a £120 victim surcharge.
“It is completely unacceptable for businesses to put the health of people eating at their restaurants at risk,” said Mark Croxford, head of environmental health at the council.
“The owners were given sound advice which they chose to ignore. I am pleased magistrates supported our efforts with a large fine and hope advice we give on improving businesses to protect health will not be ignored in future,” he added.
Don’t stop using wooden boards …. just clean them properly !
Can someone enlighten a foreign reader what the ” £120 victim surcharge” is and who gets it? It sounds something like a congestion charge.
Many thanks.
The victim surcharge is a contribution towards court costs. The costs they were ordered to pay are a contribution towards the prosecution costs. Its a way of funding the court system but is badly named.