Council cock-up gives Corby pub a bad name

Potential customers at a Corby pub were wrongly led to believe it had one of the worst hygiene ratings possible - because of a council blunder.

The White Hart in High Street was mistakenly given one out of five in a rating by North Northamptonshire Council, which said the pub had to make major improvements to its hygienic food handling.

The shocking score was widely available on the Food Standards Agency website for nearly six months.

It said the rating came after an inspection in May, but that inspection simply didn't take place.

Owners Jeri and Glen McClintock were unaware of the rating until recently.

It wasn’t until they went to check the score of another nearby establishment last week that they saw the error.

Jeri said: “Kitty’s Kitchen, next door, had their check on November 1 so they let us know. So Glen looked out of nosey factor. We went on to have a look and see what rating they got and while we were on there, we were like we'll just see what ours says.

“The comments on ours is what we were looking at because we knew we had five stars so we just wanted to see what our comments said and then we were like what the hell?”

Jeri and Glen were horrified to discover that they had been given a one out of five rating.

The pub’s actual rating is five out of five following an inspection in August 2022.

“If Kitty's Kitchen hadn’t had their inspection we could’ve gone months and months. We’re not due another inspection for another year, we could’ve gone another year having a one star rating.”

In the past six months, the pub has not been doing as well as it was last year and until now Jeri and Glen were unsure why.

“We’re about £3,000 down a week since this came out. We’ve had to let staff go and there’s staff that aren’t getting the shifts they had before.

“I’ve entered three competitions since June, all in which we were denied being part of, and I couldn’t understand why because to me we’d built up this great reputation, but obviously the second they googled us, they’re getting a one star review, why would they put us forward for a competition?

“On TripAdvisor, we worked our way up to number two within a year and the only one above us is Royal Tandoori. For ages we were like ‘we’re gonna to overtake Royal Tandoori’. Obviously now you go on TripAdvisor and we have a one star review, why would they ever put us above Royal Tandoori.

“This is my home, it’s my family business, we’re not a big chain, we are a family-run business that struggles as it is.

“I want my customers back and I want to make sure that we can still have this place in five years’ time.”

North Northants Council (NNC) has since corrected its error on the Food Standards Agency website.

Cllr David Brackenbury, NNC’s executive member for growth and regeneration, said: “It has been brought to our attention that the incorrect food hygiene rating had been attributed to the White Hart in Corby.

“The correct rating should be five stars, which is the maximum. Once the error was brought to our attention it was corrected immediately.

“We will be carrying out a full investigation to find out how the error occurred.”