Town Hall website wrongly describes kitchens as a health hazard

IT was meant to be a helpful council service that the Town Hall could be proud of – a flash new website that allows diners to check the hygiene standards of every pub, restaurant and kitchen in the borough.
But the high-tech system was at the centre of a major blunder last night (Wednesday) as it emerged that Camden Council had wrongly accused the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead of serious health hazards in its kitchens.
The new facility, which has been online as part of the council’s main website for a week, throws open the Town Hall’s private database of food safety reports and allows customers to see how well kitchens are maintained.
It rates premises on a three-star scoring system and points out potential for food poisoning.
But bungling council officials botched the manual input of information and mistakenly published a report that said that there was a “significant” danger from the e.coli bacteria in the Royal Free kitchens.
The Pond Street hospital was condemned to the worst score bracket as the false report warned consumers that the kitchens needed urgent improvements and claimed the cooking area had scored “no stars” in the all-important field of safety and hygiene.
Red-faced council chiefs, alerted to the error following an investigation by the New Journal, were last night forced into a grovelling apology.
A press official said: “We would like to apologise to the Royal Free Hospital for the error that appeared on our new food safety inspections website. We discovered there was an error in the star rating which appeared for the Royal Free Hospital kitchens. In our last inspection our team actually found that the hygiene conditions were good and our confidence in the management of the kitchens was very good.”
The bungled report was taken off-line last night (Wednesday) and replaced with much healthier scores for the kitchens that show up no major areas of concern.
Council staff then began the laborious task of trouble-shooting all of the other 2,000 database entries for errors.
A Royal Free spokeswoman said: “Mistakes happen. Obviously we all wish they wouldn’t happen but the council were quick to take it down and apologise.”
The blunder has, however, ruined the launch of a unique service which no other local authority in the country has so far implemented.
When working properly, the database unmasks businesses that are cutting corners in the kitchen by effectively setting up a hygiene league table for all restaurants and takeaways.
At a press launch last week, Labour’s deputy leader Councillor Theo Blackwell trumpeted the system as a pioneering new service.
He said: “It’s both a mark of our commitment to open government and serving the public better, that we are the first authority in England to release this valuable information to the public. This is absolutely in the best interest of the trade and consumers.”