Christmas party sues hotel over meal

Staff from an RAF base are taking a hotel to court over what they claim was a substandard meal which spoiled their Christmas dinner outing.

The 34 staff from RAF Locking are taking action in the small claims court against the 59-bedroom, three-star-rated Webbington Hotel at Loxton, near Weston-super-Mare, which is owned by London-based Meridian Leisure.

They claim the £22.50-a-head meal and cabaret started going wrong when their fish course was already on the tables when they arrived. They allege that they had to wait 20 or 30 minutes for the vegetables to arrive once their main course - roast lamb - had been served, and then they got hard carrots and cold sprouts. There was a further delay before roast potatoes, which were cold on the inside, arrived.

Jan Mohamed, managing director of Meridian Leisure, said that the hotel will contest the case because it has already offered what it believes is adequate compensation.

He said that the Webbington accepted that the catering had gone wrong on the night the group were there, but that more than 400 out of the 500 guests had taken the compensation offered.

The hearing at Weston County Court was adjourned to a date to be fixed.