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32
PART 4
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
K. J. Winton, M.A.P.H.I.—Chief Public Health Inspector
Happily, the past year was one in which it was possible to say
that staff shortages were at a minimum, and the figures shown in
Table 6 for the work of the Environmental Health Section throughout
last year shows just what can be achieved with an almost
complete establishment.
The sense of enthusiasm and drive, particularly in the Housing
and Food Divisions, which was introduced by the reorganisation of
1970, has again been carried forward throughout this year with
renewed effort, and it has been particularly pleasing to see how
both the Housing and Food Divisions have actively carried out
their programmes of work and have both surpassed their target
figures for the year.
During the year, the Housing Division was further reorganised
into two separate sections—one for the surveillance and detection
of houses in multiple occupation and one for the implementation
of major action. This has been a great success and, following the
initial period of recruitment and training necessary for the new
technical assistants, great strides were made towards the implementation
of the Council's programme for houses in multiple
occupation. In addition, the Housing Division again had to deal
with over 1,500 applications for qualification certificates during
the year, a burden which, with the introduction of the new Housing
Bill, is likely to disappear in 1972.
The Food Division successfully caught up on its backlog of work
and, additionally, throughout the year under review, had to cope
with a very great increase indeed in the number of visits necessary
to the cold store within the Borough for the purpose of taking
bacteriological samples of exotic foodstuffs, such as Chinese headless
prawns, smoked eels, octopuses and other seafoods, which
come into this country from all parts of the world.
One point of interest in the work of the Food Division is that,
during the year, a special drink dispenser survey was carried out
in all public houses, clubs and restaurants in the Borough. Attention
had been drawn to the fact that metal pourers used to dispense
fruit squashes were affected by the acid content of the liquid
and ultimately every drink poured from a bottle fitted with such
a dispenser contained a high degree of copper. Thirty of these