Swindon businessman in trouble with courts again for dangerous hotel

Shamsuddoha Chowdhury's Swandown Hotel on 36 to 37 Victoria Road did not carry out work to assess health and safety risks to customers, employees, and contractors.

He tried to convince authorities that a completed risk assessment for a different venue was in fact for his Old Town guest accommodation.

The allegations concerned blocked fire escapes, damaged electric sockets, lack of Covid-19 controls at the time, and broken bed frames.

Chowdhury and his company, Swandown Hotel Ltd, were fined more than £8,000 in total after they both pleaded guilty to contravening a health and safety improvement notice at Swindon Magistrates Court.

Shamsuddoha Chowdhury (Image: Newsquest)

Swindon Borough Council's food hygiene team visited his hotel in August 2021 after receiving concerning complaints from customers, then carried out more safety inspections and issued an improvement notice to Chowdhury in September 2021.

The notice had a deadline for work to be completed by November 5, 2021, which was extended to December 15. But when SBC's officers returned to the building on December 20, nothing had been done.

When interviewed under caution in May 2022, Chowdhury apologised and acknowledged he had been given "plenty of time" to do the work.

During the interview, he provided officers with a documented risk assessment that was supposedly produced for the hotel by his health and safety consultant - but the assessment was not site-specific and lacked important information.

Council officers then discovered that its true author was actually a guest house owner in another part of the country.

They spoke to the property owner, who had not visited Swandown Hotel, carried out risk assessments on behalf of other hotels, had any knowledge of or relationship with Swandown Hotel Ltd or the defendant, nor given permission for him to use the risk assessment.

When appearing in court last Friday (March 31), the notice had still not been complied with, even a year and a half after being issued, which particularly displeased the magistrates, who warned the defendant that he could be prosecuted again if action was not taken.

They also criticised his attempt to pass off another business’s risk assessment as his own.

Chowdhury promised that he had now engaged a competent person to undertake a risk assessment and that this would be completed soon.

He received an £830 fine and must pay £1,000 towards the council's costs plus £83 to fund victim services. His company has been fined £8,000, plus £190 for victim services, and the remaining £1,186.75 of the council’s costs.

Speaking to the Adver, Mr Chowdhury said: "It was nothing serious, all the issues were sorted out except for the risk assessment, which was not done in due time.

"We bought a template online but it was not authentic. It's all in hand now, and the risk assessment is being submitted."

In previous years, Mr Chowdhury has been fined for food hygiene breaches at the Baraka Groceries shop on Lagos Street, which recently opened a newly-built three-storey building across the road to expand its range of available stock.

In 2013, food hygiene inspectors fined him and co-owner Golam Chowdhury for storing Jamaican vegetable burger patties in unrefrigerated spaces which made them mouldy and unsafe to eat, and selling them to customers after they had passed their use-by date.

At the time, Chowdhury said: "This sort of mistake won’t happen again in the future.”

But in 2015, the owners got into further trouble with the food hygiene team, receiving fines of £7,200 each because they had breached 10 health and safety regulations by leaving several tonnes of food to rot in a broken freezer.