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Public Health Inspection of the Area -1963
Report of Chief Public Health Inspector
The work of the Public Health Inspectorate in relation to the environmental health
services is set out in tabular and statistical form in the following pages. There are,
however, a number of matters of a topical interest which are worthy of further elaboration
and certain statistics which require summarising in order to present an intelligible
picture.
'Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through the groundglass
windows and skylights, leaving a black sediment upon the
panes, showed the book and papers, and the figures bending over
them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in
appearance from the world without as if they were assembled at the
bottom of the sea, while a mouldy little strong room in the obscure
perspective, where a shady lamp was always burning, might have
represented the cavern of some ocean monster looking on with a red
eye at these mysteries of the deep.'
--Charles Dickens. 1843.
When Charles Dickens wrote that penetrating description of the cheerless atmosphere
of a nineteenth-century business house some hundred and twenty years ago, he was in
fact drawing attention to the need for legislation to improve and control working
conditions of those engaged in office and other non-manual employment. The extension
of the framework of welfare legislation which has long been enjoyed by factory workers
to include hitherto unprotected office workers, and certain other classes of employment,
has at long last been achieved in the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act
introduced in December of this year.
The declared objective of the Act is "to set standards of health, welfare and
safety of employees in office, shop and railway premises". Thus its provisions relating
to offices and certain kinds of railway premises are the first of their kind. At the
same time existing protection for shop workers is extended.
In so extending health and welfare legislation into new fields of non-industrial
employment the Act has succeeded where other attempts over the years have failed. Taking
the country as a whole, its provisions will apply to over 1,000,000 premises-650,000
shops and 400,000 offices-eight million workers will be brought under its protection.
All workers will be within its scope whether they work in separate office buildings or
in offices forming part of other buildings, as, for example, in the offices belonging
to schools, factories, hospitals, clubs, hotels, etc. The definition of an office
includes rooms or premises which are used for the wide variety of purposes normally
encountered in offices, for example writing, filing, duplicating, telephone operating,
etc. The aim is to protect all who are office workers in the ordinary sense. The Act
does not apply to premises where only self-employed persons work.
The Shops, Offices and Railway Premises Act is an impressive piece of legislation.
It affects vast numbers of the working population; it shows an approach to detail
favourably comparable to any other legislation in the same field. Its substantive
provisions can be immeasurably reinforced by delegated legislation; the Act can become
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