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24
SANITARY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE AREA
SECTION C
(In conjunction with Mr. W. C. Bartlett, Chief Public Health Inspector)
The appointment of Islington's first Sanitary Inspectors is referred to in the
historical appendix to this Report. They, were not required to pass qualifying
examinations, and it was not until 1877 that the Royal Sanitary Institute endeavoured
to remedy this situation by promoting examinations. In 1895, the possession of
Certificates of competency was made obligatory for all new appointments in London.
In 1922, the possession of a Qualifying Certificate became compulsory for the rest of
the Country. A new Examination Board has now been set up as recommended in
the Report of the Working Party on the Recruitment, Training and Qualification of
Sanitary Inspectors which was submitted to the Minister of Health in 1953.
With regard to the qualifications of the sanitary inspector, one cannot do better
than quote from the Report of the Working Party, paragraph 106, which states, " 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 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 insector 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 Government, upon considering the duties at present carried out by this
officer, decided this year to re-designate the Sanitary Inspector who in future will be
known as the Public Health Inspector.
Under proposals made by the Minister of Health in agreement with interested
Bodies, arising out of the recommendations of the Working Party on the Recruitment,
Training and Qualification of Sanitary Inspectors, the Royal Sanitary Institute
and Sanitary Inspectors' Examination Joint Board has been reconstituted as the Public
Health Inspectors' Education Board. The objects of the new Board may be summarised
as follows :—
(I) to examine for and issue a Diploma in Public Health Inspection as the
basic qualification to be recognised by the Minister ;
(II) to examine for other Certificates it may consider necessary for Public
Health Inspectors ;
(III) to approve courses for instruction for all of its examinations ;
(IV) to approve local authorities for the purposes of practical training ; and
(V) to keep under review all questions relating to the recruitment, training and
examination of Public Health Inspectors.