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6
HEALTH DEPARTMENT,
MUNICIPAL OFFICES,
380 OLD STREET,
EC1V 9LS
Telephone: 01-986 3123
To His Worship, the Mayor, and the Aldermen
and Councillors of the London Borough o f Hackn ey
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The year has been one of apprehension and anxiety. Following the enormous
changes that affected the department during 1971 after the formation of the
Social Services Department, the staff were beginning to re-settle when the
prospect of further change and upset due to the Reorganisation of the Health
Services became a realization. Although during the previous year there had
been Green Papers and rumours, it became obvious towards the end of the year
that reorganisation was, in fact, going to come about. Little detail was
available and it is only at the time of writing the Report that the National
Health Service Reorganisation Act has been passed but detail of staff
transfer is still not available. The reorganisation, in spite of statements
to the contrary, will vitally affect the working life and, to a certain
extent, the ordinary life of most of the staff of the department. They face
possible alteration in their place of work and the context of their work is
bound to change. The department itself is bound to be further split, part
remaining with the environmental services of the Borough, and part being
transferred to some new Authority. The staff were worried at the end of
1972 and signs of staff moving into jobs, where their future would be a
certainty, was becoming apparent.
The department still continued to have difficulties in the recruitment
of health visitors and public health inspectors, although, as I have mentioned
in previous Annual Reports, the Committee have done their best in the way
of incentives. Our main source of supply still lies in training our own
students, both public health inspectors and health visitors.
The senior staff of the department remain very much the same with the
exception of the Chief Administrative Assistant and the Chief Public Health
Inspector. Mr. J.A. Rozzier, the Chief Administrative Assistant, moved to
take up a similar position in Hammersmith in December 1972. Mr. Rozzier
although he had only been with the department some 2½ years had given
excellent service and had done a great deal of work in the reorganisation
and re-structuring of the department after April 1971. His successor, Mr.
F.B. Osborn, was appointed and took up duties on the 27 December 1972.
Mr. T.H. Marshall, Chief Public Health Inspector, who had served for many
years with the previous Shoreditch Metropolitan Borough Council, and was
the first Chief Public Health Inspector when the new London Borough of
Hackney was inaugurated in 1965, retired. He had pioneered many aspects of
environmental work and in recent years had been particularly involved in the
control of noise. His successor, Mr. A.S. White, who had served the London
Borough and previously the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, was appointed
in September.