IN Brief:
- Ole & Steen has been ordered to pay £34,847 following a Westminster City Council food hygiene prosecution.
- Inspectors found significant mouse activity, droppings, and poor hygiene practices at the Haymarket branch.
- The case underlines the importance of turning documented food safety systems into effective daily controls.
Ole & Steen has been ordered to pay £34,847 after Westminster City Council found serious food hygiene failings at the Danish bakery chain’s Haymarket branch in London.
The case was heard at Westminster Magistrates Court on 10 June 2026. The business pleaded guilty after an investigation found significant evidence of mouse infestation, droppings, and poor hygiene practices at the branch, located at 56, No 2 Haymarket, St James’s Market.
Environmental health inspectors carried out a routine inspection in January 2025 and identified significant mouse activity throughout food preparation and storage areas, including fresh droppings in multiple locations. Officers also found poor food hygiene practices that created a risk of cross-contamination.
The council’s investigation included a detailed inspection of the premises, review of pest control records, photographic evidence, and assessment of food safety management systems. It concluded that procedures existed on paper but had not been effectively implemented in practice. The business had already been made aware of pest issues through its pest control contractor before the inspection but had failed to take effective action.
The financial penalty included a £26,000 fine and costs, taking the total to £34,847. The court placed weight on the fact that the business had prior knowledge of the problem but did not act effectively before council intervention.
Although the case is foodservice-led rather than factory-led, the operational lesson applies across food manufacturing, bakery, chilled production, and packaging environments. Food safety systems are only as strong as their implementation. A documented pest control programme, hygiene schedule, or hazard analysis is not enough if corrective actions are missed, records are not escalated, or staff fail to act on known issues.
The same gap between procedure and execution has appeared in product recall activity, including a recent Filippo Berio allergen labelling recall that showed how documented controls and operating reality must line up. The Ole & Steen case sits in a different part of the sector, but the underlying principle is the same: procedures have to be live, understood, monitored, and acted on.
Pest control is one of the more unforgiving areas of food safety. Rodent activity can contaminate food, packaging, utensils, surfaces, and storage areas. It also indicates potential weaknesses in cleaning, proofing, waste handling, stock rotation, building maintenance, and site monitoring. Once activity is identified, the response has to be fast, documented, and verified.
Bakery and food-to-go operators face particular pressures. Early starts, high footfall, fresh ingredients, open preparation, delivery access, and waste streams create opportunities for pests if controls slip. Multi-site businesses also need to make sure local managers understand escalation routes, because a failure at one flagship site can affect confidence across the wider brand.
Manufacturers face similar risks at larger scale. Ingredients such as flour, sugar, nuts, chocolate, dried fruit, cereals, seeds, and packaging materials can attract pests if storage and housekeeping are weak. Dry goods stores, loading bays, waste areas, mezzanines, drains, and external perimeters require routine monitoring. Any evidence of activity needs investigation into both immediate treatment and root cause.
The enforcement action also demonstrates the importance of closing the gap between audit readiness and operating reality. A site may hold procedures, contractor records, staff training material, and cleaning schedules, but regulators will judge whether the system prevented contamination risk in practice. Where records show that a business knew of a problem and failed to act, enforcement risk rises quickly.
Food businesses should use cases like this to review pest control escalation thresholds, cleaning verification, contractor reporting, management sign-off, and corrective action closure. The cost of prevention is rarely the issue. The greater exposure comes when known hazards are allowed to remain live in food preparation or storage areas.
