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INTRODUCTION
The first nine months of 1970 were eventful and the Department was working under
pressure. There can be no doubt however that the event of the year was reorganisation. It is
not possible to calculate the time and thought that was spent on this exercise or to express
it statistically because it pervaded or influenced.activities and meetings other than those directly
concerned with the subject. During these nine months the number of meetings attended by
the Acting Medical Officer of Health was about one per day, approximately half of them being
meetings of officer groups and/or Council Members. Delegation was practised as far as it was
feasible to do so but one was constantly up against two intransigent difficulties, the shortage
of senior staff and the unusual volume of work including reorganisation requiring the Chief
Officer's attention. The Principal Medical Officer had to undertake more duties and eventually
was recognised as Acting Deputy Medical Officer of Health. Attempts of different kinds were
also made to recruit suitable staff within the existing terms of employment, but these were
completely unsuccessful and only a long term solution to the problem seemed possible. Such
a solution would have to be dependent upon prolonged negotiations involving the already
protracted exercise of Organisation and Methods, prolonged discussions on the new departmental
structures, the social services legislation, and the discussions of the Mallaby Working Party on
the organisation of the whole Council service.
Although shortage of staff was not new it had now become much more acute and it was
under this serious handicap that the dynamic situation of these months had to be faced.
Management, just then in the vigour of its ascendancy and with a controlling interest in most
staffing matters, had no ready answers. During this time there were no less than thirteen special
staffing problems demanding attention, only about half of which were capable of resolution
within the Department. In general it seemed that the staffing of the Department was less
cumbersome in 1965 when there was a more direct control.
An important policy decision was reached by the Council in May. The Organisation and
Methods survey of the Department, which had started in the summer of 1969, was said to
be within weeks of completion, but a report was not presented. Instead however, attention
was focused upon the top tier structures of the Health and Welfare Department and the Children's
Department in what became at very short notice a reorganisation exercise. An intensive appraisal
of various management concepts followed and the Council accepted the two-department concept
now in operation, a concept not surprisingly favoured in the main by the officers of those
departments. An alternative concept having obvious appeal in management circles would have
meant the creation of a new post of Director of Community Services over both departments,
a post open to candidates from all professions and lay administrators. The rejection of this
idea will probably prove to have been a wise decision. It was a salutary experience nevertheless
to be forced back to fundamental principles and to have to state their continuing relevance
in response to unexpected and challenging proposals from outsiders to these services. It was
proposed for example to transfer the environmental health section of the Department to the
Town Clerk's Department, although on Green Paper theory there was to be no separation of
the local authority health services until 1974. Another suggestion was to transfer all the accident
prevention work of the health visiting section of the Department to the Road Safety Section
of the Town Clerk's Department, presumably in the interests of tidier management.
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