08 Jan 2013
A former presenter of Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector has hit out after a council gave her own hotel a one-out-of-five food hygiene rating.
TV hospitality expert Ruth Watson says she will seek a judicial review as she “strongly disagreed” with the rating. It means “major improvement is necessary” at The Crown and Castle, which she co-owns in Orford, Suffolk.
Suffolk Coastal District Council issued the rating after inspecting the 21-bedroom hotel, where guests pay up to £315 a night for a room.
Mrs Watson said, having worked in the hospitality industry for almost 30 years, she fully accepted there was “always room for minor improvements”.
Her statement added: “However part of the problem appears to be that the boundary between taking food safety very seriously, as we always do, and being allowed to cook top-quality local ingredients in the way our customers want, is being irrevocably blurred.
“We have made every effort to resolve our dispute with the Food Safety Team as swiftly and amicably as possible, but remain unable to agree with their approach, and so we have commenced the first stage of a judicial review action to allow a court to determine the fairness of the inspection and the rating.”
Copyright Press Association 2013