Sporting bright yellow and blue paint and carrying an ironic name, The Fawlty Towers hotel in Great Yarmouth is only a short walk from the sea front.
But when Environmental Health Officers from the local council visited the venue, they found improvement was needed with the cleanliness and condition of facilities. This included having ‘appropriate layout, ventilation, handwashing facilities and pest control’ to enable good food hygiene’.
On Trip advisor, guests visiting the hotel – which was named after John Cleese’s iconic 1970s BBC sitcom – were scathing about their experiences.
The sitcom, which aired between 1975 and 1979, is likely to return to the small screen after the former Monty Python star announced he was writing new episodes with his daughter, Camilla, 39.
As of March 8, there were 189 hotels in England and Wales listed by the Food Standards Agency as having the three lowest rankings, Improvement Necessary, Major Improvement Necessary and the most serious zero rating, Urgent Improvement Necessary.
The Fawlty Towers hotel in Great Yarmouth is among the 189 hotels in England which requires improvement
Among those requiring Urgent Improvement Necessary, was the Mandeville Hotel in Westminster. Food inspectors visited the premises on August 25, 2022.
The Westminster City Council inspectors found the hotel needed major improvements with its hygienic food handling, cleanliness and conditions of facilities and building and the management of food safety.
It costs around £240 a night to stay at the Mandeville Hotel, which is just off Wigmore Street and a short distance from Oxford Street.
Overlooking Hyde Park is the Baglioni Hotel which officers luxury 5* Italian accommodation in the heart of London for £500-a-night.
When inspectors from Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council visited the hotel on January 3, they found improvement was needed with the hygienic handling of food and the cleanliness of facilities and the building.
The Baglioni Hotel overlooking Hyde Park was found in need of immediate improvement
L’Ocar in Bloomsbury was visited by environmental health officers in November 2022 who found it needed to improve its standards
The ratings on the Food Standards Agency website are only concerned with the safe handing, storage and preparation of food. They do not consider areas such as value for money or taste.
In Bloomsbury, L’Oscar hotel was visited by inspectors from the London Borough of Camden on November 12, 2022 where they gave the £420-a-night hotel a rating of 1.
The inspectors praised the hotel’s cleanliness, but found issues with the handling and storage of food. They also said major improvement was needed in the management of food safety.
The Food Standards Agency was established in 2000 following a string of high-profile food poisoning outbreaks.
The body is independent of government and protects consumers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland from adverse unsafe food products.
The FSA also protects the consumer from food crime.
In 2013, the National Food Crime Unit, which is part of the FSA uncovered the horsemeat scandal where investigators discovered substantial horse DNA in meet labeled beef.
More recently the NFCU discovered a major retailer wrongly labelling south American beef has being UK produce.
Businesses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are scored out of five and firms must be marked at least a three to pass muster. In January, a report by the Food Standards Agency found one in five UK takeaways failed basic food handling and cleanliness checks.
In Scotland, there is a different rating system where businesses either pass or need improvement.
A spokesperson for the FSA said: ‘The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) gives people information about the hygiene standards in food businesses, and they can use the rating to help decide where to eat out or shop for food.
The Mandeville Hotel in London was also found to be in breach of food standards regulations
‘Ratings are a snapshot of the standards of food hygiene found at the time of inspection by food safety officers from local authorities.
‘The scheme gives business ratings from 5 (very good) to 0 (urgent improvement required). Ratings can be found online and on the green and black stickers displayed at business premises.’
The spokesperson added: ‘The FSA advice to people when choosing where to shop, eat out or order food is to check that the business has a food hygiene rating and choose only those with a higher rating.’
Firms who are prosecuted for breaching food safety regulations faced a maximum fine of £5,000 if found guilty at Magistrates’ Court. However, this ceiling was lifted in 2015 which led to Tesco receiving a record-breaking fine of £7.56million in April 2021, when the supermarket giant admitted 22 counts of selling out of date food.
MailOnline has approached the hotels named in the article for comment.
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