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TREASURE TROVE
In February, 1966, a group of volunteers excavating a rubbish pit on the site of the Dyers
Arms found a Henry IV Gold Noble. The coin, measuring 1. 7/16" and weighing 119.3 grains,
was struck between the years of 1399 - 1412 It is valued at £2,000.
An Inquest ruled that the coin was not Treasure Trove and therefore belonged to the owners
of the site, Messrs. Charringtons, who have presented it to the Guildhall Museum.
OBSERVATIONS ON CATERING ESTABLISHMENTS IN THE CITY
During the year under review two Public Health Inspectors have continued to devote most of
their time to the control of restaurants, public houses, staff canteens, licensed clubs and other
catering establishments, but it has again been a year of disappointment. Few major schemes of
improvement and reconstruction have been initiated and caterers generally have been unwilling to
undertake other than essential works of repair, maintenance and re-decoration. It has been found
that hygienic standards in City restaurants tend to rise or fall roughly in the same ratio as the
variation in the prosperity of the industry. At the present time the catering trade is passing
through a very difficult period; business is static, costs are continually rising and there has
recently been the additional burden of the Selective Employment Tax. Many catering businesses
have ceased to show even a minimum return for the capital and effort put into them and it is not
surprising, therefore, that in many cases the standards of hygiene and cleanliness have not been
maintained.
Legal proceedings were instituted in one instance only, when fines totalling £80. 0s. 0d.
were imposed. Conditions may have justified legal action in other cases but hitherto the policy
has been to draw the attention of caterers to unsatisfactory conditions as and when they are
found as the result of continuous routine inspections and to give restaurant proprietors an opportunity
of rectifying such conditions. It would seem, however, that if unsatisfactory conditions
cannot be remedied by the present methods a more rigorous approach may have to be adopted to
emphasize and impress upon the more dilatory caterers that it is a specific and definite contravention
of the Food Hygiene Regulations to conduct a restaurant in dirty premises. At the
present time many caterers seem to think that an offence has not been committed until they fail
to comply with a notice from this Department.
Apart from economic considerations, staff shortages and particularly the difficulty of recruiting
interested and competent staff, continue to present caterers with an apparently insoluble
problem. There have, however, been cases where because of financial difficulties
caterers have been operating deliberately without a full complement of staff and in such instances
it has been found that essential daily cleaning is often neglected.
Much time and energy has been devoted to the consideration of all proposed new catering
units and every effort has been made to ensure that each new restaurant established in the City
complies with minimum standards. It must be realised, of course, that there is no compulsion on
any caterer to accept the advice of officers of this Department and in the absence of any statutory
enactment giving local authorities the power of "prior approval", a local authority's ability
to prevent the establishment of new catering businesses in premises which are basically unsuitable
or unsatisfactory is very limited. Difficulty has been experienced in several instances
of new catering units being put into commission in badly designed or badly constructed premises
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