Award-winning chef admits repeatedly breaking food hygiene laws (original) (raw)

An award-winning chef has admitted criminal offences over food hygiene problems at his street food van. Jamie O'Leary, who ran JOL's Food Truck in Ogmore-by-Sea, pleaded guilty to 17 charges.

O'Leary quickly won acclaim after his restaurant JOL's opened in 2015 in Merthyr Tydfil High Street. Six years later he switched from bricks and mortar to a JOL's van which was based at the Rivermouth coastal car park in Ogmore-by-Sea.

More praise followed including a British Street Food award in 2021 — but the business has closed and O'Leary, 42, has been taken to Cardiff Magistrates' Court by Vale of Glamorgan Council. The offences took place on four dates between May and August last year.

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The court heard that the council considers O'Leary's culpability to be "very high", while District Judge Steve Harmes said: "I don't think this can go down to medium culpability, no way, because there are repeated, repeated, repeated problems with this business that are not addressed." O'Leary has pleaded guilty to the following offences:

• Keeping food which was likely to support the growth of pathogenic micro-organisms or the formation of toxins at a temperature above 8C;
• Failing to ensure food was protected against any contamination likely to make it unfit for human consumption or contaminated;
• Failing to ensure appropriate facilities available to maintain personal hygiene, including for the washing and drying of hands;
• Failing to keep a label on the packaging of live bivalve molluscs — which were not in individual consumer-size packages — for at least 60 days after splitting the contents;
• Four counts of failing to ensure premises were kept clean and maintained in good repair to prevent risk of contamination;
• Three counts of failing to ensure all equipment with which food could come into contact was effectively cleaned and disinfected;
• Three counts of failing to put in place a permanent procedure based on the HACCP principles (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point);
• Two counts of failing to ensure food handlers were properly supervised, instructed and / or trained in food hygiene matters;
• Failing to comply with a hygiene improvement notice.

Judge Harmes said he did not believe the crimes warranted a jail term. He noted that the business had closed so any risk to the public had ended. The navy-suited chef, of Pontsarn Close in Pontsarn, Merthyr Tydfil, was told his sentencing would be adjourned to later in the year.

O'Leary, a former railway worker, trained as a chef at The Hardwick near Abergavenny. In 2022 we reported his JOL's van was attracting "queues stretching down to the rocks at the edge of the seafront" with its lobster Thermidor roll and high-end burgers.

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