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Food hygiene lends itself to written assessment less than
almost any other aspect of a Public Health Inspector's workbut the
following jottings can be regarded as a guide to the prevailing
standards. Although there is a great deal of large-scale catering
in the district e.g. large factory canteens, aircraft catering
establishment and civic restaurant as well as the usual run of
restaurants, school canteens etc. no major outbreak of food
poisoning has occurred for many years every hawker of open
food and every mobile ice-cream dealer carries proper washing
facilities; food premises are inspected on average 6 or 7 times
a year; a lot of attention is paid to health education of food
handlers by means of lectures, film shows etc. to supplement
the educational work carried out as a normal part of the Inspectors'
routine visits samples of those foods most commonly
associated with food poisoning (cooked meats, cream cakes etc.)
are taken regularly for bacteriological examination and particular
attention has been given to the special problems associated
with aircraft catering which is carried out on a large scale in
the district.
Only 4 houses need regular routine visits by the Public
Health Inspectors for the purpose of ensuring that a reasonable
standard of domestic cleanliness is maintained: the incidence
of bugs and fleas amounts to 7 or 8 cases a year and the level
of rodent infestation can be judged from the fact that treatment
in dwellings, shops, commercial premises and some factories
(the larger ones are treated by private operators) occupies the
services of only one operator for about 15 hours a week.
Nuisances (in the public health sense) are not numerous.
Open sites, hedges and ditches are used for the dumping of
household refuse in spite of the availability of a free removal
service and builders rubble too is often deposited on these
sites the adoption, some years ago, of Byelaws for piggeries
and stables led to a considerable reduction in the number of
these establishments and to a big improvement in the remainder
every year the canal feeder which runs across the northern part
of the district gives rise to complaints but trouble here is
more visual than physical; in spite of the district's industrial
background complaints about noise, apart from aircraft noise,
are very few. There are, of course, no legal powers available
to Local Authorities to deal with this nuisance and the ever
increasing power and size of aircraft lead one to believe, however
regretfully, that noise from this source is unlikely to
grow less.
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