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Training and Qualification of Sanitary Inspectors which was issued during the year.
The Working Party in its Report stated that—
" A Sanitary Inspector is a Local Government Officer whose duty it is to secure
compliance with certain laws designed to protect the public health. To do this, he
needs to have a good working knowledge—in many cases a detailed knowledge—of
certain techniques and sciences. The number and variety of these is the outstanding
feature of his work. Thus while not himself practising medicine, architecture,
engineering, or building, he must know something of all of them, and all this calls
for a very special type of training. But first and last he is an executive officer, exercising
control over the public in accordance with the law of the land, a control which often
touches the pocket of the individual and could in the wrong hands be very galling.
It is here that the modern sanitary inspector has developed his own special skill over
and above those he borrows from other callings. The public health code is a vast
and complicated one and it is the sanitary inspector's function within his own field
to translate it into terms intelligible to the common man and so enable him to see
clearly what he must do and how he can do it with least inconvenience and expense.
The sanitary inspector must needs be familiar with many trades but he must also be
master of one—a most important one in a free community—that of interpreting the
requirements of the law to the citizen and enlisting his willing co-operation."
The Working Party concluded that over the next five years and possibly ten years,
250 Student Sanitary Inspectors should commence their training annually if there
is to be anything like a sufficiency of Inspectors in the future. At present the
numbers commencing their training in England and Wales are very considerably
below this figure. For some years this Council has arranged for the training of two
Student Sanitary Inspectors and this scheme has proved beneficial both to the Council
and to the Students concerned.
The study of the extent and nature of atmospheric pollution is important; if
the subject is to be dealt with systematically, more local information is required. In
conjunction with the London 6s? Home Counties Smoke Abatement Advisory Council
and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which is responsible for
collating findings in all areas, three recording and measuring stations were set up in
the Borough during the year. These stations measure the rainfall, the soluble and
insoluble deposit and sulphur dioxide emissions. The stations are situated respectively
at the Town Hall, Community Centre, York Way Court, and the Disinfecting
Station, Seven Sisters Road.
With regard to health publicity and education, this side of the Department's
work is increasing. In addition to the Food Hygiene Exhibition already mentioned,
the Department also took part in another Exhibition. Regular evening film shows,
including health films are now a constant feature of the Department's work in the
autumn, winter and spring months, and special lectures and demonstrations have been
arranged for particular groups, including food handlers, students and school children.
1953 was also the first full year for staff specially appointed by the Council
towards the end of 1952 to carry out work in connection with the needs of elderly
persons. The Report gives a list of 17 cases where the Department had to take
Statutory action to safeguard elderly persons against the results of their own weak'
ness and inability to manage their own lives, brought about, in the main, by old
age. The circumstances in every one of these cases are distressing, but many other
elderly persons were brought to the attention of the Department by various