RESTAURANT ORDERED TO CLEAN UP
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BY OLIVER WRIGHT
10:30 - 06 August 2008
A Nepalese restaurant has been ordered to clean up its act after hundreds of mouse droppings were found throughout the premises.
Health inspectors discovered faeces behind cupboards, under cookers, on a wooden serving trolley and stuck to the side of open bags of flour and rice at Gurkha Palace, in Conduit Street, next to Leicester railway station.
They also found droppings in a corner of the restaurant itself and in the men's toilets, and a number of holes which had been gnawed in the wooden skirting boards.
At a hearing yesterday, Leicester Magistrates' Court was told that following their inspection on Thursday, July 31, environmental health officers had no option but to shut the restaurant.
They said there was "extensive evidence" of mouse activity at the restaurant which posed an "imminent risk of injury to health".
The closure was supported by magistrates who granted a hygiene emergency prohibition order, which means owners Yam Rai, Roshan Gurung and Nirmal Damai have to bring the restaurant up to required standards of cleanliness before it can be reopened.
The owners, none of whom attended the court hearing, were ordered to pay £729.70 in costs.
Speaking afterwards, environmental health officer Susan Clement said: "It is by no means the worst case that I have seen in my 10 years in the job, but if we find the risk then we have no option but to take action.
"Food business operators must not wholly rely on their pest control company to keep the premises pest-free, they must do their own checks regularly if they want to avoid this happening."
Ms Clement said that inspectors had visited the restaurant since closing it and the owners had already made good progress on cleaning the premises.
She also said the owners had told her that when they got approval to reopen the restaurant they would not do so immediately but would wait and carry out their own monitoring first.
Environmental health officers visited the restaurant yesterday to see what progress had been made and gave it the all-clear.
When the Mercury tried to contact the owners, nobody was available for comment.
The closure of Gurkha Palace brings the total number of businesses shut by the city council due to rodent infestations in the past 12 months to 26.