RMH Stamford Ltd, which owns The Bombay Cottage Indian restaurant in Stamford, Lincolnshire given £160,000 fine after Home Office raid found illegal workers

A restaurant owner has been hit with a hefty fine after a Home Office raid found he was employing illegal workers.

Indian restaurant The Bombay Cottage in Scotgate, Stamford, was visited by immigration enforcement officers, who found four people were working illegally. The Home Office has not provided any further details on what happened to those arrested, despite being repeatedly asked.

RMH Stamford Ltd, a company owned by Hassan Rahman, was given a £160,000 fine as a result.

An application for the district council to review the premises licence - a legal permit needed to sell alcohol - was also made by the Home Office in February. However, the premises licence was given up weeks later, which meant the review didn’t take place.

Hassan says his company has owned the restaurant since 2021. He said a decision to remove the alcohol licence was “personal” and not related.

He told LincsOnline: “We were completely distraught at the Home Office investigation. We believed the workers were legal, they had their papers.

“We are going through the Home Office appeals process with regards the fine.”

The Home Office investigation took place in November.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Organised immigration crime is a multi-million pound industry, which stretches from the trafficking routes thousands of miles away through which people are brought to our country to the high streets across the United Kingdom where many of those people end up working illegally.

“As part of our plan for change, this government is cracking down on that criminal industry at every level, including stepping up our visits to restaurants and other businesses where illegal working is taking place, and increasing our enforcement action both against illegal workers and the people who employ them.”

CORRECTION

This article replaces a previous article published on April 11, which reported that the owner of the Bombay Cottage restaurant in Scotgate, Stamford had been fined £160,000 after immigration enforcement officers discovered that four people were working there illegally.

In the article, we said that the restaurant’s owner was Coun Habib Rahman. We did so because in every previous article we have published about the Bombay Cottage, Coun Rahman always told us that he was the owner.

However, after last week’s article was published, Coun Rahman informed us that the restaurant is actually owned by RMH Stamford Ltd, a company owned by his son and with which he has no connection. We are happy to make the position clear and apologise for any distress caused.