A restaurant owner and one of his employees have had to pay a total of £20,941, after pleading guilty to numerous fire safety offences under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order SI 2005/1541.
The fire was started deliberately on the ground floor of the Red Ginger in Bushey, Hertfordshire, in the early hours of Friday 9 July 2010. An employee who was sleeping on the first floor was woken by the smell of smoke which had engulfed the premises. He had to escape by climbing up through a window, sliding down the roof and dropping to the ground. Fire crews wearing breathing apparatus entered the premises to search for other occupants and to extinguish the fire. Nobody else was found, despite numerous beds and mattresses discovered on the first floor. The crew also noticed that the fire alarm system was not working.
Among the offences, there was a failure to carry out a fire risk assessment and a failure to provide emergency lighting for escape routes. Both Kamruz Zaman and Adiel Choudhury pleaded guilty to failing to provide appropriate fire fighting equipment and detection and alarm systems, failure to appoint competent persons and a failure to provide safe emergency routes and exits.
Hertfordshire's chief fire officer Roy Wilshire commented, "Where breaches of fire legislation are considered so serious that there is a risk of death or serious injury to persons, we will consider prosecution. In this case, members of the public and employees were put at risk and one employee was extremely fortunate to escape with his life."
