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The owner of a patisserie in the small Surrey village of Stoke D’Abernon has been charged with a number of food safety offences and fined more than £3,500.

John Matthews, who owns the Patisserie, was accused of putting his customers’ health at risk after environmental health officers from Elmbridge Council inspected his premises in 2009. They found a number of food hygiene problems, including:

• Walls, floors, ceilings and food preparation surfaces that had not been cleaned
• Raw ingredients not being kept in appropriate conditions to stop them deteriorating
• Failure to manage a proper food safety management system (which should include food safety training for staff)

Following a drawn-out court case, Mr Matthews was eventually fined £1,250, £1,500 and £750 respectively for each of these breaches.
Commenting on the outcome of the case, the council’s head of environmental health, Tony Deag, said:

“This has been an unusually protracted case, but demonstrates the council’s unwavering commitment to taking appropriate enforcement action when food business proprietors fail to take the necessary steps to ensure that consumers are protected.
“The conditions officers found in this case were easily avoidable and despite having been warned, the proprietor continued to break the law with poor standards of hygiene.”