‘Isn’t it all just down to a sniff test now?’ said the duty manager of the Hotel Maria in Sandown whilst environmental inspectors visited the hotel, later awarding it a 1-star food hygiene rating.

The Isle of Wight Council’s Environmental Health team paid a visit to the establishment of Culver Parade in Sandown on 24th May and found 5 serious faults in the operation of the hotel, including 3 relating to previous inspections held back in 2017 and 2018.

Inspectors found they weren’t implementing effective monitoring procedures at critical points – an issue that dated back to a stock control issue raised in 2017.

During the inspection, officers found foodstuffs with incorrect dating such as a large container of tuna mayonaise with a date that was 8-days expired, that had been used for making tuna salad packed lunches.

The chef and duty manager were said to have had no intention of taking corrective action until prompted to do so, with the duty manager making light of the situation saying: ‘Isn’t it all just down to a sniff test now’.

Other issues that they found included that the dilution of hand and surface sanitisers used was often down to guesswork rather than accurate measurements – again an issue raised at previous inspections. There was also a lack of hand wash basins throughout the premises with no sink available in the main kitchen. In addition, panels were not fixed to the wall correctly in the kitchen and the layout of it was poor and didn’t allow for regular cleaning and maintenance.

Hotel Maria is currently up for sale.

Food Hygiene Rating – Scores on the doors

Compliance with food hygiene and safety procedures – 10 Compliance with structural requirements – 10 Confidence in management/control procedures – 20

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The inspectors are partly to blame, if they last visited in 2017/18 we all know the staff turnaround in these establishments, and given it was cause for concern back then, really, what did they think would happen? All places should be inspected regularly, citing covid is a poor excuse.

Why didn’t environmental health shut them down given their lacksadaisical attitude? Shocking.

Yummy yummy can’t beat out of date tuna to give to the squirts

Disgusting attitude, yet one wonders just how the scores on many foreign eating establishments would fare against our own.

No doubt as the recession and coming slump hits profits, many owners will skimp ever more and use out of date food, scrape left over foods to create other meals, and skimp on cleaning etc as staff are hard to find, and time is money

Best not eat out but do you own food wherever possible now.

Surely if they are taking no notice of previous inspections especially regarding food out of date they should be shut down with immediate effect.Those poor kids

As a slump hits the UK soon, then such places will spend less money and time on safe food practices.

Stick to large chain hotels as they have strict polices and high turn over of staff who will blow the whistle on shoddy practices, unlike smaller or family run concerns.

Large chains can be just as bad, check out where you are going to eat first. Plenty of small businesses who care about their customers and food hygiene scores.

This is a blatant case of the Manager and Staff having absolutely no intention of following ‘guidelines’ or procedures. Sorry – this should gave resulted in an immediate and total shutting down of the establishment!

If maria was still alive shed be turning in mouldy tuna right now…how disrespectful

Why does that have a bearing. Hopefully not. I have had visitors come down on a coach holiday from Scotland who stayed there. I felt awful after they went home with some of the tales of what went on and the food etc., that I had let them stay there. Now I always check hotels before they come all the way down here.

are you surprised, worked for this lot before and it was disgusting, should never be allowed to own any hotel in first place

All very well telling us now, why did you not report them at the time. If it had been that bad why did you not leave straight away.

Why did you not bring it to anybody’s attentionwhen you worked there? Or were you as bad as the rest of them

They obviously don’t give a damn,!!!!! Up for sale so they don’t care ,no pride in their job’s ….. Should have been shut down …. During lock down would have been perfect time to get it up too standard… But as for o o date tuna ?????? Disgusting, what else have customers been served ??????

This was in May yet they still have coaches of kids staying there. Why weren’t they stopped before they have a serious outbreak of salmonella.

One look at the building tells you everything you need to know. Pity the poor tourist booking there unsuspecting. What a sh*hole, no wonder its (thankfully) doomed – a quality establishment this is not.

I think it’s terrible.

Damn, I was about to book a holiday there soon…. not

I have complained about this hotel for a few years now after having known people staying there on coachtours. The whole experience was awful. This is the trouble with hotels being allowed to be ran by people who give substandard meagre accommodation and only care about the money at the end of the day. This means now 80 percent of our Esplanade road Hotels are not fit for purpose. Wrecks and ruined hotels not even cleaned up. The likes of Tarvic 2 and it’s friends along there derelict for years. They can’t get the insurance money for the fires so now they leave them empty and rotting… This is Sandown England not the Gaza Strip.

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