Councils cut health and safety enforcement

Date: 1 March 2011

Local authority environmental health departments are suffering as a result of budget cuts according to Environmental Health News.

Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) working for local authorities enforce health and safety law for the majority of Usdaw members who work in shops, offices and warehouses.

A survey carried out by EHN – the journal of the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health – suggests that environmental health departments hit by budget cuts have lost on average two full-time equivalent front-line staff in the last six months

25 councils reported that they have already lost environmental health staff, are expecting redundancies or have a recruitment freeze. Many manager, EHO and technical officer posts have been left vacant.

Some EH teams are facing large-scale redundancies as services are merged or shared. For example a total of 35 EHO jobs are at risk in Rochdale due to plans to merge environmental health with trading standards. In Worcestershire, seven authorities are merging their environmental health, licensing and trading standards services with a reduction of staff from 165 to 120.

 A Worcestershire EHO told EHN ‘With people leaving, redundancies, stress and briefings about the new service, the current work patterns have been disrupted. ‘I don’t think anyone has spoken about or recorded the stress this has placed on those involved. Several people have suffered stress-related symptoms. Those of us who consider we have provided a good service to our duty holders cannot imagine how we can continue to protect the health and wellbeing of residents and employees within our districts with this new regime.’

As part of our activity around Workers' Memorial Day on 28 April, Usdaw will be urging members to find out what is happening to health and safety enforcement in their local authority.