Raise the Mainsail
From its hosting of Hartlepool’s Tall Ships Races to plans for the 2012 Olympics and 2018 World Cup, there is plenty of life and optimism in the North-East. Stuart Spear reports
The Environment Agency recently announced record numbers of sea trout and salmon in the River Tyne, declaring it the best river in England for these fish stocks. It is a significant achievement given the region’s industrial and mining past. Fifty years ago the river was so polluted that fish numbers were decimated.
Stephen Savage, director of public protection for Newcastle City Council, believes that returning fish numbers are symbolic of the rebirth being experienced across the North East.
Part of this rebirth is demonstrated in events such as Hartlepool’s hosting of the 2010 Tall Ships Races, which attracted nearly a million people to the town over four days in August. The event is England’s largest free festival, which European towns and cities jostle to host in order to boost their local economies.
Across the region, regulatory service teams are preparing to host the 2012 Olympic football matches and eagerly anticipating a Fifa decision in Zurich on 2 December about the staging of the 2018 football World Cup. If England wins, Newcastle and neighbouring Sunderland are the top contenders to host it, along with 10 other national sites. Newcastle has already been earmarked to host the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
‘It’s all marvellous, it’s what we should be doing to bring the country out of recession,’ says Stephen. ‘It’s a really positive move forward for Newcastle and is part of an ongoing phenomena over the last five years. We have to operate environmental health and trading standards to drive business forward while protecting the public, and all this helps.’
Stephen’s enthusiasm for the changing fortunes of the North East is infectious. Most EHPs are optimistic about the region’s future and there is plenty to be enthusiastic about. The biggest recent change has been a major local government reform last April that streamlined 13 districts into the two unitaries of Northumberland and Durham.
The CIEH North East regional management board is equally upbeat about breathing life into what many admit was becoming a moribund CIEH region. Its environmental health co-ordinator Gary Carr believes that members lost confidence in the CIEH’s ability to meet their local needs, believing the charity had become too London-focused and out of touch with the North East.
‘Other professional organisations like the Food Standards Agency and Health and Safety Executive filled the void by embedding a lot of theme-based training around competencies, superseding the role of the CIEH with the profession seeing them meeting their needs more than the CIEH,’ explains Gary.
The region also faced practical problems, such as uncertainties around the Durham and Northumberland reorganisations. The untimely death of centre secretary John Craig last year was another sad blow.
But the region is moving on now, says Phil Bentley, a private sector EHP who chairs the North East regional management board: ‘The North East region is a story of regeneration and rebirth. It is true we were heading to becoming moribund. But now we are regenerating through engagement with students and by providing training and support for officers through CPD training as well as working with the commercial and independent sector.’
A key strategy adopted by the board has been to ensure that meetings focus on outcomes rather than procedure and that EHPs from a wide range of backgrounds are recruited on to the board. Members’ average age has now fallen from about 50 to 30.
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One such new recruit is Stuart Langston who, as health and safety and wellbeing manager for Hartlepool Council, had been preparing for last month’s Tall Ships Races for the past three years. It was an enormous operation, attracting up to 100 tall ships from 20 countries, with pop concerts and the creation of a village for the event.
In addition, he is Hartlepool’s wellbeing officer working in human resources and is reviewing all the council’s occupational health services. Stuart believes his job shows how diverse the role of EHPs is becoming and says the CIEH needs to support these wider, less traditional roles.
‘Mental health is an area which I am increasingly involved in, which has very little to do with the traditional regulatory services role. In Hartlepool, and some other authorities, links between health and safety occupational health and wellbeing are being strengthened,’ says Stuart. ‘We have people on the board with private sector experience, people with regulatory experience and people like me who have both, which is providing the board’s strength as it goes forward and EHPs do more non-traditional roles.’
For the traditional EHP working in regulatory services, specialist liaison groups have grown up across the former Tyne and Wear, Durham and Northumberland region and others are being set up in the Tees Valley.
Graeme Wilson at Sunderland City Council set up the Tyne and Wear private sector housing group about four years ago to end the duplication between councils. The group has recently focused on selective licensing and is trying to adopt a common approach to the way councils interpret licensing conditions in areas of low demand or antisocial behaviour. It is also establishing links with its local primary care trust (PCT).
‘We were starting to get the message across to the PCT that you improve housing to improve people’s health and were putting together some proposals to fund staff in the housing team to carry out inspections in poor areas. Of course, all that is shelved at the moment until we know what is happening with the PCTs,’ says Graeme. Uncertainty in the run-up to the October spending review is widespread in the region.
Paula Davis sits on the North East food liaison group and is involved in a project to improve food inspection consistency. So far, about 60 EHOs have inspected under six set scenarios, allowing food teams to address individual inconsistencies.
The group is trying to create better consistency between councils on policies such as revisits and supporting the opening of new premises. It is also setting up a regional curry chef competition, with a regional final planned for next year.
Historically, the group has been independent of the CIEH but that has been changing recently, says Paula: ‘We have linked up nicely with the region’s CIEH over training and are now delivering a much better training programme than in previous years as a result, at a reasonable cost.’
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The setting up of the North East Public Protection Partnership to co-ordinate activity across the North East after the local government review is another recent development. ‘This was a huge opportunity to review how we governed the liaison arrangements. It developed on the back of the Local Better Regulation Office agenda but it was the local government review which also prompted this,’ says partnership chair Joanne Waller, who also heads the environment, health and consumer protection team at the new Durham County Council.
‘We now have a new landscape with two huge unitaries and have rationalised 23 authorities down to 12, providing us with an opportunity for heads of services to get together at a strategic level.’
Another result of the local government review has been the setting up of a new postgraduate certificate at Northumbria University, designed to develop environmental health and public protection skills in line with the competency frameworks being developed. The university has been working closely with Durham County Council to tailor the course to their needs.
‘This is the first such course to meet the specific requirements of an employer and while it is being piloted with Durham it will be modified to make it relevant across the country,’ says Tim Hibbert at Northumbria University, who helped develop the course.
The course’s advantage is that it focuses on workplace experiences. It also requires minimum learning time away from the office. It may be developed into a diploma, then an MSc.
Smoking cessation has proved to be one the North East’s greatest successes and the region has achieved the biggest drop in adult smoking nationwide. Fresh, Smoke Free North East and its partners, was last year awarded the Chief Medical Officer’s Gold Medal award for its contribution to the improvement of public health. Fresh has just launched a second-hand smoke campaign to tackle children’s exposure to tobacco.
Another developing area has been collaboration with the Health Protection Agency (HPA). Responses to infectious diseases are being standardised across the region, with the HPA contributing to regional training and joint conferences.
A post unique to the North East CIEH region is the creation of a retired members’ liaison officer that has been filled by Kevin Hardisty who retired in March and aims to keep retired members involved in CIEH activity.
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Regional environmental health co-ordinator Gary Carr has recently completed a training needs assessment for a regional training programme. The study incorporated all the region’s EHPs, not just CIEH members, and the research has been used in Gary’s MA project. His findings conclude that the profession in the North East undervalues itself and its public health role.
‘Few identified themselves as experts in their field and if we are not the experts in environmental health then who is?’ says Gary. ‘We need to look a the issues of competence and confidence and address the latter.’
Gary believes that including non-members in training assessments is one way of re-engaging those active in environmental health with the CIEH.
Tom Carver’s appointment last year as the region’s executive officer is also helping this process as he assists with administration, organising meetings and communication, producing a quarterly electronic news letter for all EHPs. ‘We want non-members to be aware of what we are doing so that they will say they want to be part of that,’ says Tom.
For further information Contact: Gary Carr. Email: garycarr@Gateshead.gov.uk or Tom Carver. Email: tcarver@live.co.uk For information on retired members in the North East Contact: Kevin Hardisty Email: kevin@kevin-val.co.uk