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OFFICES, SHOPS AND RAILWAY PREMISES ACT, 1963
During the year 10,654 visits were made to offices within the City. This total number is made
up of general inspections and subsequent inspections. The number of general inspections alone
which were carried out during the year was 2,936.
In the course of routine general inspections throughout the City it is surprising tofind that,
almost ten years after the passing of the Act, there are still some employers, opening offices in
the City, who appear to be unaware of their obligation to register their premises. In every case
where these premises are discovered registration is effected immediately.
During the year 630 new offices were registered and 543 were removed from the register.
These new registrations, together with deletions due to removals and demolition of buildings,
change-over of occupants, and large-scale office developments, mean that a considerable amount
of time and effort is expended merely on statistical inspections and debit and credit bookkeeping.
It is in fact questionable whether existing staff is sufficient to guarantee effective coverage of
the whole of the City at reasonably frequest intervals. The number of new offices alone is posing
an increasing problem for the manpower resources available. For instance, during the year to
31st December, 1971, there were 389 new registrations and 363 removals from the register, with a
net gain in new offices of 26. That is, of all registrations in 1971, 7% were entirely new additions
to the total.
During the current year there were 630 new registrations and 543 removals from the register,
with a net gain in new offices of 87. That is, of all registrations in 1972, 14% were entirely new
additions to the total. The trend is therefore to escalating office turnover, with activity during
the current year increased by 36% and entirely new additions increased by 100%. In terms of manpower,
the inspection of offices in relation to deletions, renewals and entirely new registrations
effectively represents the full-time annual workload of one Inspector.
So far as existing offices in the City are concerned, the scale of the problem is large and in
volume it is the biggest single responsibility of the Department. One office alone involved 2,500
employees and approximately a quarter of a million square feet of office space, and since this
particular office was in single occupation it was recorded as only one general inspection.
The problem of ensuring an effective deployment of staff resources to the inspection of
offices has meant that in the past few years the City Public Health Inspectors have been obliged
to shoulder an excessive workload.
During the current year, therefore, the Offices Section was reorganised. An additional Senior
Public Health Inspector was appointed, who assumed complete control of the organisation and
co-ordination of the work necessary to implement effectively the provisions of the Act. This has
resulted in greatly increased productivity in relation to office inspections and the consequent
release of some Public Health Inspectors to tackle more in-depth problems in other partially
neglected spheres in the City. For instance, with the use of more effective management techniques
and the employment of one additional Inspector, general inspections for the current year have
increased since last year by nearly 50% - that is, from approximately two thousand in 1971 to
approximately three thousand in 1972.
It is interesting to review the annual number of general inspections of offices carried out in
the City since the Act came into force in 1963 and to note the trend of ever-increasing annual
inspections. The following time series says much for the efforts of the Inspectors concerned. The
trend upswing is considerably in excess of the proportional increase in available staff who were
engaged in this work.
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