The owner of a shisha bar in Leicester has been fined for smoking in his own establishment.<\/p>\n
Bhavik Chavda, the director of Embassy Lounge by Bharaja, was caught smoking with other men, in a shelter at the back by Officials from Leicester City Council.<\/p>\n
When officers examined the shelter they found black polythene sheeting had been put up meaning it was too enclosed to be legally used for smoking.<\/p>\n
Under the rules buildings and structures used for smoking, such as Shisha bars, must be at least 50 per cent open.<\/p>\n
Council officers calculated the shelter in which Chavda was smoking was 58 per cent enclosed so they decided to prosecute him.<\/p>\n
The council had visited the premises in 2017 and found the shelter met the requirements of the law at the time but the addition of the plastic sheeting at a later date made it illegal.<\/p>\n
Chavda admitted the smoking offence at Leicester Magistrates Court.<\/p>\n
He was fined \u00a3140 and ordered to pay a \u00a330 victim surcharge.<\/p>\n
The council also prosecuted two businesses run by Chavda \u2013 the Embassy Lounge and the Bharaja Lounge which have been merged into one company – for failing to stop smoking in premises that should be smoke free.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to both charges and magistrates issued fines totalling \u00a31,600 with a \u00a3160 in victim surcharges.<\/p>\n
The court also ordered Chavda to pay the council\u2019s costs of\u00a0\u00a31,779.50\u00a0in bringing the case leaving him facing a bill of more than \u00a33,700.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The owner of a shisha bar in Leicester has been fined for smoking in his own establishment. Bhavik Chavda, the director of Embassy Lounge by Bharaja, was caught smoking with other men, in a shelter at the back by Officials from Leicester City Council. When officers examined the shelter they found black polythene sheeting had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,3,112,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}