A restaurant has been allowed to keep its licence despite providing working conditions that “bore all the hallmarks of exploitation and modern slavery”.

The owner was hit with a £60,000 fine after a search by Home Office officials found five people working there illegally, with one seen sleeping on the kitchen floor.

Anil Verma, the owner of Saraswathy Bhavan – a vegetarian Indian restaurant in Wembley – illegally employed five back of house staff working in the kitchen.

They were paid in cash and below the April 2022 national minimum wage of £9.50 an hour.

Brent Council’s alcohol and entertainment licensing sub-committee “gave serious consideration” to revoking the restaurant’s licence but concluded that it would be “disproportionate” and, instead, chose to suspend it for three months. 

Immigration officers addressed the committee last Thursday (June 15), informing them that Mr Verma was operating a “two-tier staff system” with legal workers at the front of house and illegal workers in non-customer facing roles as the back.

The committees former chair and current Wembley councillor, Ketan Sheth, had also called for the complete revocation of the licence.

During the Home Office raid in March of this year, one worker told officials that they worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for which Mr Verma would pay them £30 or £40 a day – the equivalent of £4 an hour.

Another admitted to working there for the past three months, for which they were paid £900 a month cash in hand, as well as being provided food from the restaurant.

They told officers that their employer was aware they had no right to work in the UK and never showed any documentation prior to starting the role.

The worker found sleeping in the kitchen claimed they had entered the UK in 2006 by hiding in a lorry.

Since being in the country, they have not applied for a visa and never had the right to work. Officers were told that they had been living in the restaurant for the past ten days, having been granted permission to do so by “the owner of the shop”.

Mr Verma told the committee that he “wouldn’t have let him” sleep on the floor had he known it was happening and he had given the person a job “as a good human” because he was struggling.

He acknowledged that he had asked for a copy of the worker’s passport but neither received it nor chased it up because it “slipped my mind”. 

The restaurant owner accepted that he had done wrong but said that he was having difficulty finding workers and his business was suffering badly since the pandemic.

Cllr Narinder Bajwa said this suggests Mr Verma deliberately employed people he could pay less to save money.  

His lawyer said revoking the licence would be “very harsh” as it’s the first time it had happened.

After a short period of deliberation, the committee agreed not to revoke the licence but suspended it for three months and agreed to include a number of conditions.

These include making sure copies of all staff records are kept on site and made available on demand to a police, council, or immigration officer, as well as allowing access to officers during working hours to check compliance with the licensing conditions and the status of employees.

A statement read by the legal advisor on behalf of the committee said: “[We] accept that there had been no previous issues with the premises and that Mr Verma had cooperated with immigration.

“We also noted the substantial civil penalty that had been imposed to mark the business failings.”

Justine Currell is the director of Unseen, a charity that supports survivors of trafficking and modern slavery, said the “maximum available penalties” should be imposed on those that flout the rules.

She added: “The deterrent has to be such that there is a revoking of a licence and people are not allowed to continue in this fashion.”