A former pub landlord rapped in 2015 for flouting fire safety rules was found to have breached the same regulations four years later.
Cassian Hazlewood’s bed and breakfast at Manor Farm, North Hinksey, was visited by Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service officers in August 2019 after a tip off from a guest concerned with fire safety measures at the six-bedroom annexe.
The 50-year-old was on holiday when the fire service went round on August 29.
They spoke to a staff member, who despite having been in post and living in staff accommodation on site since April that year, hadn’t received any fire safety training.
Prosecutor Richard Heller said there was no fire risk assessment, the fire alarm system was not working, two fire doors had been removed, another was sticking and other fire doors weren’t connected to a system that would see them automatically closed when the alarms sounded.
Emergency lights were not working and fire extinguishers at the B&B had not been serviced since 2007.
The fire inspectors were so concerned they issued a prohibition notice preventing the second floor of the three-storey building from being used. Four paying guests had to be found alternative accommodation.
Mr Heller said Hazlewood’s employee put the officers in touch with him. “He expressed dissatisfaction that part of his business was being forced to close.”
The officers were told that Hazlewood had taken the business over a year earlier, when he was told the system worked. When an electrical fault was discovered later on, the fire alarm system’s fuse was removed.
When the fire service returned a fortnight later, on September 17, he’d taken efforts to fix the problems but it wasn’t until March the next year that the remedial works were taken.
The court heard Hazlewood was running the General Elliot pub in South Hinksey in September 2015 when officers stopped B&B guests from sleeping on the top floor as a result of problems with the fire alarm system.
Sentencing him to 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for a year and a half, Recorder Michael Roques said: “It must, it seems to me, have been very clear to you that there was a significant risk.”
Not only was there no plan in place and no alarm system, the judge said, but smoke would have been able to ‘travel unobstructed’ through the building. Guests would ‘eventually have been confronted by a fire door that was sticking’.
In mitigation, the father-of-four was said to deeply regret what had happened and recognised the risks in the building. He had no plans to return to running businesses with paying overnight guests.
Hazlewood, of Blackstock Road, London, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to four breaches of fire safety regulations. He had no previous convictions.
The judge ordered he do 200 hours of unpaid work and pay £1,000 costs.
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