Cibo restaurant fined for hiring illegal workers

The owner of an Italian restaurant chain popular with Manchester’s celebrities has been fined £80,000 after three people were found to have been working illegally there.

Cibo was raided by immigration enforcement officials in June 2024 after a tip-off about the restaurant in Hale, Trafford.

The Home Office said three of its employees were in breach of their visa conditions and did not have the right to work in the United Kingdom.

RSB Restaurant Limited – which also owns restaurants in Manchester, Wilmslow and Stockport – has launched an appeal against the fine, the Home Office said.

One of the three people found to be working illegally was wearing a chef’s uniform and tried to leave the premises when he spotted the immigration enforcement team during the raid on 15 June 2024.

Home Office checks revealed he entered the UK in 2008 on a family visa which expired a year later and did not entitle him to work.

He told Home Office officials he had worked at Cibo for four years as a chef, earning £600 a week.

He gave vague answers when asked who had hired him.

Another man, spotted with a tea towel around his waist, also tried to leave when the raid began.

He had only been in the UK for three months as part of a six-month visitor visa which did not entitle him to work.

The man told immigration staff he worked as a cleaner.