Staff at a Chinese takeaway in Swindon have blamed their poor food hygiene rating on language barriers.

Oriental Express at Clive Parade off Cricklade Road was given a two-out-of-five score following an inspection on Thursday, September 7.

Swindon Borough Council’s Environmental Health team found that the restaurant’s hygienic handling of food which includes preparation, cooking, re-heating, cooling and storage, was generally satisfactory.

It was the cleanliness and condition of facilities and building where the takeaway fell majorly short of what is required for a hygienic food business.

Swindon Advertiser: The Swindon takeaway was inspected in September.The Swindon takeaway was inspected in September. (Image: Dave Cox)

This includes having appropriate layout, ventilation, hand washing facilities and pest control to enable good food hygiene and inspectors stated improvement was necessary here.

A member of staff who wished to remain anonymous explained to the Adver why they believed the takeaway was awarded the lowly score.

“The language barrier is the issue because they had not necessarily followed the correct procedure but they were still following the procedure,” they said.

“When labelling items it was not correct as it should have been the time it was to be used by not the date they froze them.

“They were not keeping the records up to date as they had their own way of keeping these but they weren’t council regulated.”

Despite the staff assuring this was the reason for the rating, the cause given would fall under the remit of management of food safety.

This looks at having a system or checks in place to ensure that food sold or served is safe to eat and that the food safety officer has confidence that standards will be maintained in future.

It also lists that there should be evidence that staff know about food safety and this is marked as being generally satisfactory.

This suggests that the missing of three marks is more likely due to the issues regarding the cleanliness and condition of facilities and building.

When quizzed on this matter, the anonymous staff member said: “We have changed the layout of where they were preparing the food and packing.

“The cleanser that they were using has been changed too as it didn’t fit the BS standard.

“I think it has more to do with the language barrier because the staff were not necessarily aware that the cleanser they used did not fit the standards.

“We are waiting for the council to come back now as we have done everything the council has told us to ahead of the reinspection.”