By Louise Lazell From Total Essex

A GRANDFATHER whose family suffered food poisoning at a cockroach-infested Caribbean hotel has received £2,500 following a six-year legal battle.

Golfing enthusiast Geoff Clarke, 78, of Foxholes Road, Great Baddow, also saw his grandson Aaron eventually placed in a wheelchair at the four-star Bahia Principe Hotel in the Dominican Republic.

Tour operators have now paid out £5.5 million in compensation to 963 holidaymakers on the 2007 trip following a High Court ruling.

“We were there for two weeks but it was only after three days that we started feeling really ill. It was a disaster and not a holiday at all,” said Mr Clarke.

“At the start of the holiday, I would look out of the window and see all the sunbeds were full, but by the end they were virtually empty.

“I was the last out of my family to get ill.”

The various families arrived in the Dominican Republic’s San Juan province in 2007, before guests quickly developed salmonella, shigella and campylobacter.

Some were ferried to hospital in a fleet of ambulances.

Guests described to Irwin Mitchell’s London-based law firm stories of undercooked food covered in flies, mice and dogs free-roaming, cockroaches and ants in bedrooms and bathrooms and the smell of sewage, urine and vomit in the hotel.

“My grandson, Aaron, was basically wheeled around for the rest of the holiday. He was so weak. He lost so much weight, the poor thing. He was definitely most affected,” said Mr Clarke.

“One day my grandson and I went to use the golf course, but discovered the grass was up to our waists.”

Soon after the incident, law firm Irwin Mitchell embarked on a campaign with its clients, suing Thomas Cook, My Travel, First Choice and Thomson.

It also sealed a settlement for more than 100 guests who fell ill at the same hotel in 1997, and for others at the hotel in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and in 2010 – and continues to act for clients now.

First Choice was the last to settle with 400 customers, including Mr Clarke, for the 2007 saga on July 17.

Mr Clarke said it was a surprise when the settlement came in and that it was sad his late wife never got to see it.

“I think it was all ridiculous. Irwin Mitchell did a very good job to keep going. We’d just had enough by the end of it.”

Clive Garner, of Irwin Mitchell, said: “The long history of guests suffering illness at this hotel makes grim reading,” he said.

“We remain very concerned that hotels and tour operators have not learned vital lessons.”

PHOTO: Geoff Clarke