Punch to pay out £27,000 after fire regs breach

07 January 2011 by
Punch to pay out £27,000 after fire regs breach

Punch Taverns has been landed with a bill of more than £27,000 after one of its London pubs fell foul of fire safety legislation.

The London Fire Brigade found "serious" breaches of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 at the Milestone pub in Mile End, east London in 2008, including no emergency plan, a lack of fire-fighting equipment and no fire risk assessment.

The tenant was issued with an enforcement notice to fix the problems but the work was not complete when officers returned on 14 November. The tenant has since left the pub, leaving Punch with the bill.

The company was fined £8,500 and ordered to pay more than £18,500 in costs in what was thought to be its first ever breach of the regulations.

A spokesperson for the company said: "Punch Taverns has an excellent safety record across its estate and remains committed to ensuring that all of our pub businesses are safe and fully compliant.

"Our BIIBAS-accredited Code of Practice clearly outlines our commitments and we play an active role in ensuring that our licensees understand their own obligations regarding operating safe, legal and compliant businesses.

"Punch Taverns were only fined a total of £8,500 for these offences which arose in 2008 and the judge commented on Punch's excellent safety record and highlighted that the company's current compliance systems are ‘impressive'. It is regrettable on this occasion that the fire safety works, which our partner had previously agreed to undertake but failed to deliver, meant that the works which were already in progress, missed the deadline for completion of works by just two days."

Punch sees sales uplift thanks to managed pubs >>

Piers Morgan buys leasehold to Hansom Cab pub >>

Revive sells Old Bear pub after two years >>

By Neil Gerrard

E-mail your comments to Neil Gerrard here.

If you have something to say on this story or anything else join the debate at Table Talk - Caterer's new networking forum. Go to www.caterersearch.com/tabletalk

Caterersearch.com jobs

Looking for a new job? Find your next job here with Caterersearch.com jobs

[Newsletters For the latest hospitality news, sign up for our e-mail newsletters.
The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking