Popular Brighton restaurant may lose licence after immigration raid

A popular Brighton restaurant faces losing its drinks licence after a raid by immigration officials found six illegal workers.

Donatello faces a licence review hearing next Wednesday (11 January) after the raid by an Immigration Compliance team from the Home Office.

The raid on the family-run business came less than two years after much-loved owner Sue Addis was killed at her home in Brighton.

Officials said that they found a Russian man, four Uzbekistani men and an Ivory Coast woman working without the correct visas at the restaurant, in Brighton Place, on Wednesday 9 November.

Papers published before the hearing next week include representations from Sussex Police and the Home Office asking Brighton and Hove City Council to revoke the restaurant’s licence.

Six neighbouring businesses and residents have sent the council letters in support of Donatello.

The restaurant’s licence permits the sale of alcoholic drinks from 11am until midnight from Sunday to Thursday and from 11am on Fridays and Saturdays until 1am.

The business can also serve food and non-alcoholic drinks until 2am on a Saturday and Sunday morning and until 1am for the rest of the week. However, Donatello’s published closing time is 10.30pm.

The Home Office said that “appropriate checks” were not carried out to ensure that all staff had the right to work. Most of the illegal workers present had seasonal agricultural visas, allowing them to work on fruit farms.

The representation said: “One of the people who walked off the site was an asylum-seeker who admitted to being paid £7 per hour in cash. It is clear the employer is complicit in paying cash in hand to his staff.”

Sussex Police said that Donatello had no history of breaching the conditions of its licence nor had the police been called to any incidents at the premises.

Police licensing officer Mark Thorogood said: “The seriousness of the actions taken by the management to employ illegal workers is in no way promoting the licensing objectives.

“It raises concerns over how the venue is generally being run regarding their employees.

“Areas such as modern slavery, staff training and welfare and possible misreporting to Revenue and Customs are all areas of concern and that need to be taken into consideration when reviewing this request to revoke the licence.”

Mikele Addis, a co-director of Pietro Addis and Sons, the premises licence holder for Donatello, said that his late mother, Sue Addis, ran the restaurant. She was in charge of administration, payroll and accounts until her death in January 2021.

Mr Addis’s nephew Pietro Addis, 19, the son of his brother and fellow director Leo, is due to go on trial charged with murder next month.

Pietro Addis has admitted killing his grandmother and offered a guilty plea to manslaughter but denies murder.

Mikele Addis said: “I would hope in the circumstances that the (licensing panel) would understand that in the face of such tragedy, Leo and I have over the last two years lost some focus.

“This is compounded by the fact that the whole operation of our two restaurant businesses has fallen on us alone.”

Mr Addis said that new staff were interviewed by either the manager or head chef and asked to bring in their passports and visas which were checked and copied.

He said that the staff carrying out the interviews had misunderstood the term “seasonal worker” in the work visas that had been presented to them.

Five of the six workers found by immigration officials were registered on the payroll and had national insurance numbers.

A new staff member who joined on Monday 7 November 2022 had not provided her visa details before starting work in the kitchen – and office staff did not know that her documents had not been presented.

Since the immigration raid, Mr Addis and his brother Leo have dealt with all employment issues and have retained a specialist company, Bedrock Human Resources, to vet all existing and new employees.

The company’s solicitor Nicholas Perkins asked the Home Office to withdraw the allegations that staff were paid in cash and less than the minimum wage.

He said that all but one member of staff – who started just days before the raid on a trial period – were registered on the payroll and had national insurance numbers.

The licence review hearing – held by a council licensing panel – is due to start at 10am next Wednesday (11 January) at Hove Town Hall.