A kebab shop in Enfield and its director have been prosecuted after health and safety officials found it swarming with cockroaches and infested with rats.
Ponders End Kebab has now closed and its parent company and director, Kazim Recber, were found guilty of 15 offences after officers found “genuinely disgusting” conditions under which food was being prepared.
Council officers were sent to the address on the High Street in Ponders End in August 2020 after a customer reported seeing a cockroach of the premises.
Within minutes of their arrival, the officers found the premises swarming with live cockroaches, as well as identifying multiple hygiene failings, a court heard.
Enfield Council’s Cabinet Member for Licensing and Regulatory Services, Cllr George Savva, said it was “a genuinely disgusting pest infestation which this business failed utterly to control”.
There was also evidence “that they had managed to get into food packages, food preparation areas and storage areas,” Cllr Savva said.
“The huge population of cockroaches on site posed a imminent risk to public health and their presence was compounded by inadequate cleaning practices with dirt, food debris and cockroach faeces found in food storage and preparation areas.”
The kebab shop was voluntarily closed down for a few weeks to rectify the situation, after which council officers re-inspected the property to check the issues had been addressed and the risk to the public’s health had been removed.
But on March 1, 2021, another visit from the Food Safety Team found a rat infestation where food was being stored.
This “highlighted the business’s inability to control pests” and prompted Enfield Council to prosecute Recber, of Edmonton, and the company under which the kebab shop operates, EBM Catering Ltd, in the public’s interest.
What the? Yuck!
— Enfield Council (@EnfieldCouncil) January 5, 2022
We think you should only see this many cockroaches on #ImACelebrity and not in a kebab shop @antanddec.
Ponders End Kebab, in High Street, Ponders End & its director were prosecuted for public health failings. https://t.co/I022Kxk8x8 pic.twitter.com/hymrGsa4Fv
Both were fined £436 and ordered to pay half each of the Council’s costs £3,283.12 and a victim surcharge of £43 each, or a total of £4,241.12.
Ponders End Kebab and Recber were found guilty of 15 offences under the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations, 2013 at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court, on December 9.
Cllr Savva continued: “Food businesses need to understand that they are obligated to take the necessary measures to protect the public from harm. The lapses in food hygiene and pest control were utterly unacceptable and that was reflected in the sentence handed down by the court.”
