THE owner of a North-East hotel fears it may be forced to close after he was fined £1,750 plus £2,815 costs for a string of food hygiene breaches.

Gurpreet Singh Sahota, who owns and runs The Raven Hotel at Ebchester, near Consett, County Durham, told The Northern Echo as he walked away from court: "My business is finished."

The 39-year-old denied seven counts of breaching food hygiene regulations when he appeared before Durham magistrates yesterday.

He admitted an eighth charge of furnishing false information, for which he was given a conditional two-year discharge.

Gillian Plaice, an environmental health officer for Derwentside District Council told the court she turned up to carry out a routine inspection at the hotel, which employs 20 staff, on September 19 last year.

She said that in the kitchens she found dirty pots, pans and dishes left on work surfaces, and nothing had been tidied away.

"There was food and waste materials on the floors, which were extremely greasy and slippery,'' said Ms Plaice.

She said she also found debris and grease on shelves and dirty wash hand basins and there was no hot water.

Giles Hunter, mitigating, said it had been a lack of hot water which had caused the situation at the premises, which were otherwise kept in good order.

Mr Sahota told the court that the day before the inspection, the hot water boiler had failed and a number of kitchen staff failed to turn up.

"I decided the only thing I could do was to leave everything as it was and close the kitchens until the boiler was fixed.''

Mr Hunter said that once the boiler was repaired, the premises were thoroughly cleaned.

Magistrates, however, ruled that action should have been taken to clean the kitchen and found Mr Sahota guilty of the seven charges, fining him £250 on each count.

Afterwards, Mr Sahota, who has built up The Raven Hotel since buying it three years ago, said: "I think I have been dealt with very harshly. This is a body blow and I can't see how I can now go on with my business."