Restaurant Fined £7,000 over Fire Safety Breaches

A York restaurant has been ordered to pay £7,000 after a number of fire safety breaches were found at the premises, putting occupants at ‘risk of death or serious injury’.

People sleeping in the nine rooms immediately above the Mr Happy food outlet in Blossom Street risked death or serious injury for two years, York Magistrates Court heard.

The list of failings included:

· The internal staircase to the two floors restaurant and takeaway was blocked and couldn’t be used

· an external staircase into a nearby alleyway had flammable objects and obstacles at its foot

· the building’s fire alarm and fire detectors didn’t work

its fire extinguisher probably didn’t work because it hadn’t been serviced for five years.

Fire officers served a prohibition notice banning the use of the rooms for accommodation after they discovered the fire safety problems during a routine inspection in May 2017.

But in December, immigration officers found a Romanian restaurant employee living in one of the rooms.

Kheng Koay pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the safety of employees and non-employees from May 13, 2015, to May 13, 2017, failure to carry out a fire risk assessment during the same period and failure to comply with a prohibition notice on December 7, 2017.

York magistrates fined him £5,000 and ordered him to pay the £1,989 prosecution costs of the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, plus a £170 statutory surcharge.

Fire and rescue incident statistics: England to June 2018

This release contains statistics about incidents attended by fire and rescue services (FRSs) in England. The statistics come from the Home Office’s online Incident Recording System (IRS).

The results show in the year ending June 2018 (1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018):

FRSs attended 556,884 incidents. This was a 3% decrease compared with the previous year (576,545). The

total number of incidents was on a downward trend for around a decade, though they have increased in recent

years mainly driven by increases in non-fire incidents attended. The small decrease this year was predomi

nantly driven by a decrease in fires attended.

FRSs attended 159,685 fires. This was a 9% decrease compared with the previous year (176,054). The de

crease in fires is driven by a fall in secondary fires with primary fires also showing a decrease.

FRSs attended 226,466 fire false alarms. This was a less than 1% increase compared with the previous year

(225,899).

FRSs attended 170,733 non-fire incidents. This was a 2% decrease compared with the previous year

(174,592). For around a decade, there had been a general decline in the number of non-fire incidents. How

ever, recent years have shown large increases, largely due to a rise in medical incidents attended. The recent

decreases in non-fire incidents are mainly due to a decline in emergency medical responding linked to many of

the trials stopping in September 2017.

Of all incidents attended by FRSs, fires accounted for 29% and non-fire incidents 31%. The remaining 41%

were fire false alarms, which continued to be the largest incident type.

There were 247 fire-related fatalities compared with 344 (including 71 from the Grenfell Tower fire) in the pre

vious year (a decrease of 28%).

There were 3,106 non-fatal casualties requiring hospital treatment3 in the year ending June 2018. This was a

7% decrease compared with the previous year (3,351).