Reputedly Britain's oldest pub, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans has been handed a 1/5 food hygiene rating.

The Abbey Mill Lane establishment's new ranking has now been published following an inspection on Thursday, March 21.

Three areas were inspected by a food safety officer on the day, with "major improvement necessary" in management of food safety.

Improvement was also found to be needed in the cleanliness and condition of facilities and building area, while hygienic food handling was "generally satisfactory".

Ye Olde Fighting Cocks landlord Martin Robinson said: "We were surprised to receive this result as we feel we are better than we have ever been.

"At last year’s inspection, we were given four stars and advised what we needed to do to achieve five stars.

"We made these changes straight away so were shocked to receive the one-star rating from the visit earlier this month.

“The issues that were raised at this month’s visit included installing new LED lights in the kitchen, retiling, removing a damp issue in our wine store and replacing a leaking cooler in the cellar. We made these changes within five days of the visit, which cost us thousands.

"On our compliance inspection a week later, we were told we were at a four-star standard, so I paid for a revisit and asked for this to take place as soon as possible.

"Unfortunately, this has not happened and they posted our original result.

“If concerns over these cosmetic issues had been raised last year, we would have been able to address them over time and have kept our four-star rating. So understandably, we are disappointed at the lack of consistency.

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“We have highly qualified chefs and up-to-date perfect paperwork showing our food handling and all-day probe measurements as they should be.

"We are eagerly waiting our next inspection and expect to get four or five stars as we were advised by the inspector on the compliance visit earlier this month.

“When this happens, we will let everyone know. Here's looking forward to a five-star summer.”

Chris Traill, strategic director for community and place delivery for St Albans City and District Council, said: “We are working with the management of Ye Olde Fighting Cocks to improve their food hygiene rating.

“An inspection in March found serious failings and we had no option but to give a rating of one out of five.  A follow up visit was made three weeks later to check on progress and this was satisfactory.

“However, shortly after that we received a customer complaint which highlighted another separate, food safety issue.

“This prompted a further visit to the pub and resulted in us advising the management about improvements to cooking methods.

“Once they have shown this advice has been applied over a period of time, we will be able to reassess the rating.

“Our environmental enforcement team are supportive of our local businesses and work with them to ensure they comply with all statutory regulations.”