Food inspectors found a disgusting mess at an illegally-run Hampshire catering firm – and now its owner faces a £100,000 bill.

Tired of its repeated flouting of the rules designed to keep people safe, council officials raided Paul Gillingham’s suburban base in Winchester.

The Daily Echo reports inspectors found unidentifiable food in the filthy kitchen, including 30 joints of meat, and also food in freezers under tarpaulins in the garden.

High-risk food was even stored in a Ford Transit, including mayonnaise, which had to be kept below 8C but was at 18C.

With the case closed, pictures of what inspectors found have just been released.
Now Gillingham, 55, faces a £95,000 legal bill that, barring a major windfall, looks set to “follow him around forever”.

Winchester City Council has won an order against him under the proceeds of crime act, because he was running an unlicensed business.

Gillingham had earlier admitted 30 food hygiene offences and was fined more than £7,000 by Winchester Crown Court.

The proceeds of crime order means that Gillingham must repay £95,000 made by County Caterers while it traded illegally between October 2004 and October 2010.

That fancy-pants restaurant in Rotherwick, Hook, Hampshire, recently voted as Britain ‘most perfect town,’ was fined for poisoning guests with chicken liver parfait at a 2010 Christmas party.

Guests at the prestigious Tylney Hall Hotel complained to Hart's Environmental Health Department in January last year, triggering off a lengthy investigation and resulting in the hotel being prosecuted.

In Aldershot Magistrates' Court the hotel pleaded guilty to five breaches of food hygiene legislation:

• Two instances of placing unsafe food on the market - namely chicken liver parfait.
• Failing to comply with the requirement to implement and maintain procedures in relation to an identified critical control point, namely cooking.
• Offering for sale cheese after the date shown in its 'use by' date
• Failing to ensure that food handlers were supervised, instructed and trained in food hygiene matters commensurate with their work activity.
• Admitting failing to follow their own exacting standards.

The hotel owners, Tylney Hall Hotel Ltd, which had no previous convictions, was ordered to pay £35,900 in fines and a further £4,000 in costs.

They were told the fines would have been well in excess of £50,000 had they not been given a 33 per cent discount for pleading guilty.

With no further news on the raw-egg-in-mayonnaise salmonella outbreak at a Canberra cafe and bakery that has sickened 13, attention in the capital today turned to the owner of a Chinese restaurant who was convicted and fined $8000 after breaching the territory's food safety laws.

Health authorities shut down the Grand Court restaurant in October, 2010 for 11 days after finding grimy work surfaces and ''biological matter'' all over the cool-room floor.

But the ACT Magistrates Court heard owner Michelle Foo, 28, had worked hard to clean up the restaurant and had been allowed to reopen after it passed a health inspection.

Foo had pleaded guilty to four charges of failing to comply with food hygiene requirements and unsafe food handling.

Her defence lawyer told the court that the evidence against his client was indisputable but said Foo was very remorseful for the offences and had since turned things around at the eatery.

The court heard Foo had previously worked for Woolworths and had no experience of running a restaurant when she bought the Grand Court in August 2010.

The restaurant was old and inadequate and staff did not follow appropriate hygiene practices.

A health officer inspected the premises after a customer complained about a cockroach in a takeaway bag.

According to documents tendered in court, the inspection uncovered dirty work surfaces, greasy walls, dirty equipment and a lack of proper food-storage containers.

Authorities shut the restaurant down amid fears it was ''critically unhygienic''.

The Grand Court had since been cleaned up and had passed every health inspection for the past year.

Magistrate Maria Doogan said it was difficult to accept Foo's excuse that she was an inexperienced restaurateur, saying anyone who went into the restaurant business should know about hygiene standards.

A company that provided listeria-contaminated chicken to the airline Virgin Blue, sickening 29 passengers and causing two premature births in 2009, has received the largest fine of its type in New South Wales.

Directors of GMI Food Wholesalers pleaded guilty to 26 charges relating to the production, handling and sale of unsafe food.

They were fined $236,000 plus legal costs, in the Downing Centre Local Court. Details of the case will be published on the NSW Food Authority's website today.