From out-of-date food to unsafe freezers, retailers pay hefty price for oversight

Out-of-date food, underage sales and unsafe freezers — these things have all led to hefty fines for local retailers over the years.

The penalties have come following investigations from the Public Protection Partnership (PPP), a Trading Standards, Environmental Health and Licensing Services organisation shared across Bracknell Forest, West Berkshire and Wokingham.

Here are a few examples of the PPP’s prosecutions:

Huge fine for Tesco Warfield

Back in December last year, Tesco’s Bracknell North superstore was served a whopping £536,000 fine following an incident in July 2017.

A ten-year-old boy was electrocuted after coming into contact with a faulty electrical supply in a freezer, leaving him burnt and with pains down his right leg.

The PPP investigated following the incident, and found ‘procedures were not followed properly’ and the fault was known to exist prior to the event.

Prosecution followed and Tesco was fined £268,000 each for two health and safety offences.

Booze sold to under-age teen

A shopkeeper who sold a 15-year-old a bottle of Koppaberg was fined £330 in July 2019 following a sting operation from the PPP.

The teenager, who was working with the service voluntarily, bought the booze from BB Wines on Broad Street in Wokingham in 2018.

Parmit Singh Kapoor was convicted having failed to ask the teenager for ID or for proof of age.

Accepting guilt, Mr Kapoor explained he was on the phone with his sister who was very upset at the time.

Out of date food

Tesco Warfield made headlines (again for the wrong reasons) earlier in 2020 after Trading Standards found 46 out-of-date food items at their Bracknell North superstore.

This included 30 expired garlic baguettes.

Officers found these items during an inspection in October 2017 but it was only three years later that the supermarket was fined £160,000 for the health and safety breaches.

Pleading guilty, Tesco emphasised at the hearing that they have good procedures in place and these offences were from local failures in compliance with those procedures, which were promptly investigated and rectified.

In November 2020, the Co-Op in Crowthorne was fined £40,000 for similar offences.

An October 2018 inspection resulted in officers finding 17 expired items, the majority of which were in the fresh meat and fish sections.

An investigation by the PPP led to the supermarket coughing up an extra £6,000 in prosecution costs, too.