Grime doesn’t pay……
….was the intriguing title of the talk given by Robert Heathcock, the, intriguingly entitled, Assistant Director (High Quality Environment) at Winchester City Council. Robert explained that life in Environmental Health is nothing like the strereotype of a health inspector depicted in an episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’ (and we were treated to a short clip as a reminder). It’s not just inspecting kitchens and killing rats! Environmental Health is far removed from the Public Health Inspector of old and is now a highly technical profession covering a wide range of areas vital to the health, safety and welfare of the community.
Food safety is still an important area of work and includes inspecting restaurants and other food providers. The council issues food hygiene rating certificates indicating the level of hygiene in the kitchens to help customers decide if it is a place they want to eat. They are also for the serious purpose of ensuring that unhygienic kitchens are brought up to scratch and not a risk to health. Nevertheless most food poisoning occurs in the home as a result of poor storage of food. The ideal temperature for fridges is a maximum of 10 degrees centigrade. The Health Protection Team also deals with health education and accident investigation amongst other things.
Noise, smoke, smell and, more recently, light complaints keep the Environmental Protection Team busy. Some people are particularly sensitive to sound and Rob explained that often it was the expectation of irregular noise that can be more stressful than a continuous noise. ‘Country’ smells can also be problematic in determining what is reasonable. Light complaints have increased as a result of security lights on people’s homes especially when they seem to be triggered by nothing in particular – frequently a spider crossing the sensor.
Examples of other matters covered by Rob’s teams include: monitoring air quality, blocked drains, dangerous dogs, licensing animal establishments covering dangerous animals, Marwell Zoo, Sparsholt College, contaminated land, refuse collection and street cleaning, tree inspections and formal flower displays.
The work does have its lighter moments like watching a Pest Control Officer trying to capture a swan in a car park or the restaurant that displayed their hygiene certificate with pride not realising that it indicated that their kitchens were in need of improvement! You quickly learn not to carry anything in a breast pocket as it inevitably falls out when looking into a cesspit or some equally revolting place and no one is going in to retrieve it!
Working in Environmental Health is not always a glamorous job but someone has to do it to preserve a ‘high quality environment’.
Rob is pictured above with Rosemary Bell, executive committee member.