'Not fit and proper': Wolverhampton bar has its licence revoked for employing illegal chef

A bar and restaurant in Wolverhampton city centre has had its licence revoked after being caught employing an illegal immigrant as a chef.

The Calif Bar in Stafford Street was effectively ordered to close at a meeting of the city’s licensing sub-committee today.

Sub-committee chairman, Councillor Zee Russell, told licensee Isi Idahor he had shown a ‘total lack of compliance’ and that he was ‘not a fit and proper person’ to run such an establishment.

The licensing sub-committee was told that on May 15 last year West Midlands Immigration Compliance Enforcement (Ice) team visited the bar after receiving intelligence it was employing illegal workers.

During the visit a woman was found to be illegally working as a chef. A civil penalty of £45,000 was imposed, which remains unpaid.

Mr David Abel, a solicitor acting for Wolverhampton Council, said the bar had been issued last year with a one-week licence suspension for serving alcohol to underaged customers, and was fined £14,000 in 2023 for food hygiene breaches.

The hearing was told that Ice officers visited the bar on at 1.46pm, and found the woman trying to evade officers in a corridor at the rear of the building.

She initially gave false details, but once her identity was confirmed she told officers she had been working at the bar for 12 months as a chef, receiving payment of £40 a day and free food.

Home Office checks showed that she had entered the UK on a visit visa valid from September 2007 to March 2008. She failed to depart upon expiry of this visa and did not submit any further applications to regularise her stay in the UK. She had never held the right to work in the UK.

Mr Idahor told the committee the woman had been employed for one or two months on a casual basis, to help her following the loss of her husband.

He said he had not been able to afford the fine imposed, and had put his company into liquidation. For this reason the fine for food hygiene had not been paid in full, either, he admitted.

Mr Rob Edge, speaking on Mr Idaho’s behalf, said that revoking the licence would be disproportionate and would be unfair to the people who were legally working at the bar.

“There is no evidence or organised or repeated illegal working or wider criminality, this is a single incident arising from a failure of process,” he said.

Announcing the sub-committee’s decision to remove the licence, Councillor Russell said: “You have showed total lack of compliance with rules and regulations, we don’t think you are fit and proper to run the establishment.”