The owner of a Bradford shisha lounge has been fined £1,000 by magistrates for breaking the smoking ban by allowing customers to continue smoking inside.

Omair Mahmood, who runs Exhale in Great Horton Road, was convicted in his absence today and was also ordered to pay £550 in costs and a £15 victim surcharge.

Bradford magistrates heard that environmental health officers had visited the lounge on March 19 and caught customers and staff running across the room with shisha pipes, dropping ash on the floor as they went.

Statements read out from Bradford Council staff showed it was clear they had been smoking them.

Exhale is not the first shisha lounge to have been prosecuted by the Council for flouting the indoor smoking ban.

Markaz in Centenary Square was taken to court three times in the past 18 months and fined nearly £16,000 in total.

The restaurant has since issued a legal undertaking that it will prevent people smoking on its premises and has moved shisha smoking to an outside pavilion.