Judge condemns rehab clinic used by the stars

(Rex Features)

A private rehabilitation clinic used by celebrities including the singer Amy Winehouse and the actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was condemned by a judge yesterday for standards that would "shame a Third World country".

The Causeway Retreat on Osea Island in the Blackwater Estuary, Essex, which charged up to £10,000 a week to people with drink and drug problems, was "scandalously negligent, if not downright misleading and fraudulent", District Judge Cooper said.

The judge fined the company that ran the clinic £8,000 with £30,000 costs after it pleaded guilty to two charges of carrying on an unregistered service on the island and at a second clinic in Colchester. Brendan Quinn, a nurse and a director of the retreat, was earlier suspended by the Nursing and Midwifery Council. He and his wife were the sole shareholders of Twenty 7 management, the company which ran the clinic.

The Causeway Retreat closed in May after the NHS regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC) launched an investigation.

The 400-acre estate is owned by Nigel Frieda, a producer for the pop group Sugababes and the brother of John Frieda of the hair and shampoo dynasty. It features a beautifully appointed early 20th-century manor house, cottages offering "discreet accommodation", and a sound recording studio once used by Bob Marley.

The retreat opened in 2004, promoting itself as the first island in the world dedicated to the treatment of addiction and mental health problems.