A CAFÉ owner has blamed ‘bad timing’ on her business being handed a new one-out-of-five food hygiene rating.

Nina’s Coffee Shop, in the Westmorland Shopping Centr in Kendal, was given the score after being assessed by an officer from the Food Standards Agency on September 9.

The inspector found the hygienic food handling to be ‘generally satisfactory’, and the cleanliness and condition of the facilities and building to be ‘good’.

However, they concluded the management of food at the café required ‘major improvement’.

Manesh Patel, co-owner of Nina’s Coffee Shop said: “It’s my fault we’ve got the rating because typically I had taken the required paperwork home on the day that the inspector came.

“He needed to check documents relating to the temperature in the fridges but I had taken all of the information home by accident.

“It was just bad timing. We’ve been doing everything right for the last 18 years.

"We’re modernising things in the back but we don’t plan on making any wholesale changes before the next inspection whenever that may be. We never get told when they’re going to turn up.

“We’ll get our five-star food hygiene rating back the next time we’re inspected.”

The café was not the only business in South Cumbria to receive a one star hygiene rating recently.

Earlier this week, we brought you the news that Seafarers Fish and Chip shop in Bowness-on-Windermere had also received a one-out-of-five rating.