A Brighton restaurant was found to have employed illegal workers but their visas were not clear, councillors were told today (Wednesday 11 January).
This led to an honest mistake about their employment status which was compounded because the manager who checked the visas was not a native English speaker.
Donatello co-owner Mikele Addis explained the mix up as a panel of councillors held a formal review to decide what steps to take.
It revolved around the word “seasonal” – commonly used to describe workers in the tourism and hospitality sector in Brighton but which has a more specific meaning in immigration law.
The Home Office initially called for Donatello’s licence to be revoked, which would effectively close the popular Italian restaurant for good.
Today (Wednesday 11 January), the Home Office immigration enforcement team formally asked Brighton and Hove City Council to suspend Donatello’s licence for three months, having learnt about the family-run business’s “compelling mitigation”.
But even this would force the premises to close temporarily – and could still tip the business into bankruptcy.
The review followed an immigration raid in November when five out of six illegal workers were found to have “agricultural” visas. The sixth employee was a new starter.
Mr Addis, 43, said that a colleague had checked the overseas workers’ visas but added: “She honestly had no idea that these people – our employees – shouldn’t have been working there. She misunderstood.
“What’s actually written on these visas (is) not ‘agricultural’ or anything like it. It’s ‘temporary worker (seasonal)’. That’s what she misunderstood. I wasn’t aware that she’d misunderstood this.
“And the fact that they were all on payroll, paying tax, paying national insurance and even into pension schemes … I never considered for one second that these people shouldn’t have been working. It was a massive mistake.”
Mr Addis, a director of Pietro Addis and Sons, said that his late mother Sue Addis ran the restaurant until she was killed “pretty much to the day two years ago”.
His nephew Pietro Addis, 19, has admitted that he stabbed his 69-year-old grandmother to death at her Brighton home, pleading manslaughter. Next month he faces a trial by jury, charged with murder, which he denies.
Mikele Addis said that he and his two brothers then lost their father Pietro, who had Alzheimer’s disease and died aged 82 last March.
He added that he hadn’t always been able to give his work 100 per cent of his attention while dealing with the fallout from these events including having to identify his mother’s body.
“We’ve got everything completely under control now and in the future,” Mr Addis said, with experts having been taken on to help vet any new staff and the 87 existing employees.
He said: “All I want to do now is make my mum proud, raise money for her charity by doing fundraising events – and keep giving to her charity.
“Donatello’s meant the world to my mum. It was like her fourth child and I just want to do a good job running the business.”
Turning to the immigration enforcement officials at the licence review hearing at Hove Town Hall, Mr Addis said: “You want to punish me and make an example of me.
“But the feeling of disappointing my mum and letting her down by this huge mistake that I’ve made is the most severe punishment I could ever receive.”
Before this, immigration inspector Elliot Andrews said that the Home Office would have called for a licence review if one illegal worker had been found. In this case, six people indicated a “significant breach” of the rules.
He said that Donatello would face a “civil penalty”. The maximum amount was £20,000 a worker but this was usually reduced to £10,000 a worker for a first offence.
Four of the six people were men from Uzbekistan and they were taken into immigration detention. Another man was from Russia.
He was bailed along with a woman from Ivory Coast who was found hiding in a cupboard. She was already registered as an asylum-seeker, the licence review hearing was told.
Inspector Andrews urged councillors to “set an example” to other employers who might be tempted to take on staff who did not have the right to work here.
He said that the raid followed the receipt of “intelligence” – and last month immigration officials had raided Pinocchio, the other restaurant owned by Pietro Addis and Sons. No illegal workers were found.
Sarah Clover, for Donatello, said that the immigration raid was a “shock and awe” event – a claim that Inspector Andrews disputed.
Miss Clover told the licensing panel, made up of three councillors, that payroll records showed that everything was done through the books, including tax and national insurance payments.
A claim that the woman found working illegally was being paid £7 an hour was wrong, with records showing that everyone was paid at least £10 an hour – above the minimum wage.
The barrister said that “director oversight” was missing because the Addis family had endured two years of trauma after the death of managing director Sue Addis who handled employment and payroll matters.
Miss Clover said: “Sue Addis was a huge personality and the doyenne of the restaurant world in Brighton.”
The three sons had a supporting role, the panel was told, and one of them, Stefano, was still grieving and had moved abroad since his mother’s death.
Miss Clover said that the Home Office application for a licence review had used words like knowingly and complicit, paying cash in hand, modern slavery and exploitation of workers.
She said: “None of that applies in this case. And there is no suggestion now from immigration that it does.
“This is an administrative misunderstanding. It’s serious and I’m not undermining the seriousness of it and neither are the directors.
“And they are absolutely mortified that this has happened on top of everything else, the spotlight that’s been shone on their business, for all sorts of negative reasons, now to have this reputational slur imposed on top is almost intolerable.
“These are upright dignified business people who are proud of their legacy and proud of their reputation in Brighton.”
The immigration raid and the licensing review had already hit takings, she said. Christmas bookings were cancelled. And the council and Sussex Police were among the customers who cancelled events.
Miss Clover said that the potential losses from a licence suspension were “eyewatering” and added that the company would appeal against any suspension.
The council licensing panel consisted of three councillors – Dee Simson, Clare Moonan and Chris Henry.
They were reminded that the licensing regime was intended to be remedial not punitive, enabling businesses to operate in support of “the licensing objectives”.
Councillor Simson, who chaired the review hearing, said that the panel could consider imposing a condition on Donatello’s licence requiring records of staff’s immigration status to be available for inspection on request.
The panel retired to make its decision which is due to made public within five working days.
