WHEN environmental health inspectors sprang a surprise visit on Rafu’s last spring they found the staff wearing dirty T-shirts, raw prawns next to cooked prawns in the fridge and a lack of record keeping.

And during the two-hour visit to the Cricklade Road take-away on April 22 it was noted that staff weren’t carrying out any cleaning tasks or washing their hands – despite preparing food.

They slapped proprietor Safu Miah with two improvement notices to get his act together, but when this failed to happen he was ordred to appear in court.

On Monday afternoon he pleaded guilty to six breaches of food safety and hygiene and two charges of failing to comply with a hygiene improvement notice when he came before magistrates sitting in Swindon.

Prosecuting on behalf of Swindon Borough Council Zoe Bagwell told the court that 50-year-old Miah of Queens Avenue, Highworth, ran the business on behalf of his wife, and had last completed a food hygiene course in 2008.

She explained the officer had found the staff there were not wearing aprons and had t-shirts, which she did not feel were clean on that day. She also found a surprising lack of paperwork.

“When asked how he recorded the temperatures of the fridges he said he looked at the digital displays on the front of the fridges,” said Ms Bagwell.

“But only three of the four fridges had digital displays. When asked how he took the temperature of the one without the display he said he put his hand in there and recorded what he thought the temperature was.”

There was also no commercial waste procedure in place, with a number of cardboard boxes found to the rear of the property and an old sofa.

Defending Miah, who claims ESA, Simon White told the court that his client had not had any proper schooling having moved to the UK from Pakistan when he was younger – he had gone straight into work and had been in the food industry ever since.

“He does not do much work, if any, because of his health,” he said.

“At the time of this inspection there were two chefs working there. He accepts that standards were not properly being maintained, hence his guilty plea to the charges.

“Clearly the concerns that were raised were not such that the takeaway had to be closed, but he was served with hygiene improvement notices to show the improvements.”

Now Safu's, the '0' food hygiene rating imposed at the time has been overturned and it is now rated as 3 out of a possible 5 but Mr White told the court that the business was still failing to make a profit.

Sentencing him, chairman of the bench Sally Matthews told him they had taken into account both his early guilty pleas and his financial means, but told him he would be fined for the matters.

For failing to comply with the two hygiene improvement notices he was fined £415 a piece, which they reduced from £610 in light of his guilty plea.

No separate penalty was imposed for the earlier breaches, but he was told he must pay the council’s legal costs of £892 and a contribution towards the environmental health inspector’s costs of £700 and a victim surcharge of £42. He agreed to repay the total amount of £2,464 at a rate of £25 a week.