President’s speech: CIEH AGM 2025

Thank you to the members that took the time to attend the CIEH Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 27 June.

For those of you who were unable to attend or wish to revisit, below is a transcript of the speech I gave at the meeting.

Introduction

Prynhawn da pawb / Good afternoon everyone.

It’s a privilege to stand before you today at this AGM of the CIEH. As always, these gatherings are a vital reminder of the depth and dedication that binds our professional community together. Today, I want to speak for a short time on a topic that I encounter a great deal in our profession and indeed which I experience in life - complexity.

But some very important obligations first. I am deeply grateful to the Chief Executive and the team for all the support provided to me. I am so pleased on Fran’s appointment, congratulations. A big thanks to the Chair and Trustee Board too for all their work and dedication; also to all members involved with CIEH committees and Advisory Panels and with all other volunteer support.

My presidential year

Since the last AGM almost exactly a year ago I have attended online or in person 82 events as President. These range from Trustee Board meetings to giving speeches, chairing events, working groups and assisting in job interviews. I hope this does not put off any applicants for the next President vacancy commencing in 2027.

Some highlights:

• Four careers presentations to pupils in person – a rewarding experience. Visiting first year students at Cardiff Met University in October. It was great to feel the enthusiasm for environmental health and the wealth of questioning afterwards. A brilliant cohort that will enter the profession. Thanks to Cardiff Met and to EH lecturers at all the EH courses across the country. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said, "if you think the price of education is too expensive... you should see the cost of no education". These degree courses must grow.
• In September I had tea and cakes with a dedicated member - who was rightly concerned with a large food corporation practice – and with Alun Michael ex Cabinet Minister, ex First Minister of Wales and recently ex Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales Police. He was very supportive of our profession, understood the inputs we make and how they delivered very needed outcomes and impacts, unlike some other national bodies continually encroaching into our sphere.
• In November I threw caution to the wind and attended the Tri-Service Bi Annual Environmental Health event at HMS Collingwood, Fareham. I was in the presence of two of our Trustees, Major James Johnson and Major Kevin Shawcross, now retired – but Kevin is still very active. Thank you both for looking after me as the evening progressed. A big turnout and I learnt how important EH is to the armed forces.
• Also in November I attended the Association of London Environmental Health Managers event and gave a presentation.
• The Royal Society of Public Health Awards were held in November and Fran and I attended. Just to clarify… we were only awarded a glass of Prosecco. We made contact with the President of the Faculty of Public Health, Professor Kevin Fenton and also Dame Jenny Harries of the UK Health Security Agency. A big thank you to William Roberts, Chief Executive of the RSPH.
• The CIEH Graduation Awards were held online in December which I chaired. Well done to all.
• December saw the University of Western England EH Networking Event. An interesting and informative day. Thanks to all for organising this.
• Through the start of 2025 much concluding work and efforts resulted in the historic signing in May of the Memorandum of Understanding between CIEH and EH Australia making our qualifications transferable. Too late for me but not for all of you.
• I have been representing CIEH on a Scientific Sub Committee Working Group of the Food Safety Authority Ireland looking at the case to introduce a food hygiene rating scheme. It has been an incredible in-depth experience learning from local and world examples.
• February saw my attendance at the launch of the National Preparedness Commission’s Report – Just in case: 7 steps to narrow the UK civil food resilience gap – authored by CIEH Vice President Professor Tim Lang. It references the complexities of the food chain.
• In May I was interviewed for a podcast by Doug Farquhar, National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) of North America. I spoke of the role of EHPs and CIEH.
• During the year we have had several discussions with Water for Kids and I am very pleased to say that the Board has re-confirmed and is reinvigorating our longstanding connection.

Turning to complexities

It seems complexities are everywhere. We operate in a world that is no longer, if it ever was, linear or predictable. The challenges we face in environmental public health – EH for short – are not singular or isolated. They are interconnected, systemic, and increasingly urgent.

From climate change to housing conditions, food safety to air quality, and EH digital surveillance, we are dealing with complex adaptive systems. They do not follow neat command-and-control logic. They adapt, learn, and self-organise. Like our profession – when given room to collaborate, guided by evidence and community insight, we evolve solutions fit for today’s challenges, not yesterday’s rule book.

Let me give you a tragic recent complexity example – the Grenfell Fire. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman once wrote that violence in our age is defined by distance. Summarising Bauman's idea, the journalist Daniel Trilling has written in terms of Grenfell that this means not only physical distance, "but the social and psychological distance produced by complex systems in which it seems everybody and nobody is complicit”. This, for Bauman, works on three levels.
First, actions are carried out by "a long chain of performers", in which people are both givers and takers of orders. Second, everybody involved has a specific, focused job to perform. And third, the people affected hardly ever appear fully human to those within the system.
"Modernity did not make people more cruel," Bauman wrote, "it only invented a way in which cruel things could be done by non-cruel people." Such a description does not apply to all of those whose actions were under scrutiny. Some individuals seemed to bear greater direct responsibility.

But Bauman's theory may explain why so many people knew the dangers of Grenfell and still did nothing to prevent disaster – and why, until we change the way our society is organised, it might happen again. At the time deregulation was politically expedient, but this ideology dismantles the very safeguards designed to protect people. What is framed as ‘freedom’ for business can become death for individuals, and from such tragedies change unfolds.

EHPs are so good at looking across silos, dealing with a myriad of agencies and players, and seeing the bigger picture, the dangers and taking action whatever the issue – in housing, environmental protection, food safety, health and safety and public health. EHPs tackle complex systems very well. This complexity isn’t a barrier – it’s a fact of life in the 21st-century. It’s why our profession matters more than ever.

It is a very complex landscape and so is the influencing world of online social media. Not that long ago people were thought to be brainwashed by the cathode ray tube of television. How quaint.

EH inputs are politically and publicly underappreciated. Society is willing to spend inordinately to save a life of a person with a name, face, and lifespan through the NHS, but less so to save "statistical lives” through prevention. There is the “invisibility” of EH. When EH is working well it is not seen.

Eric Reinhart an American social psychiatrist writing in Nature in March this year has called for public health to be politicised. Was it ever thus? He calls out the continuing privatisation of public health in America and that the real crisis is not that public health – which is fundamentally about policies dictating the distribution of resources required to protect human life – has been politicised, it is that it has not been politicised nearly enough.

It is 150 years since Prime Minister Disraeli’s Public Health Act of 1875 was passed, a landmark moment that formalised the state’s responsibility for the health of its citizens. This legislation marked a decisive shift from piecemeal interventions to a comprehensive framework, covering the whole field of EH, sanitation and nuisance prevention and is one that remains foundational to our environmental health profession.

When Disraeli was mocked by his opponents for neglecting more important political reforms, he retorted with the now iconic phrase "sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas" (health above everything). Latin was about as complex as it got then. Much more on the 1875 Act in the next EHN.

Today, 150 years later, we face a new era of EH challenge. The very problems the 1875 Act sought to solve are returning in new forms, driven by a changing planet, persistent inequality and a combination of local and world political, economic, and structural factors. All with a large application of complexity.

But there can never be an apolitical approach to EH. Policy choices about social care, infrastructure, taxes and economic inequality, environmental regulations, housing, and health and safety rights, for example, are inherently political. They determine who lives and who dies, whose lives matter and how much.

In the words of Eric Rienhart, “public health is not just about medicine; it is about democracy itself”. Promoting well-being and preventing illness is what we deliver, reducing demand on the NHS. Inequality and inequity are not the same, but pressingly need compensating.

Evan Osnos an American has written on the ultrarich, the extreme wealthy, also described as – The Haves and Have-Yachts. Osnos notes that super yacht demand is outstripping supply. In some countries you have to wait for bread, water or inoculations; in others for giant sea-going vessels. In 1990, there were 66 US billionaires; by 2023 there were over 700, an increase of more than 1,000%. In the same period, the number of US super yachts has gone from “less than 10 to more than 170”. Median US hourly wages, in contrast, have risen by just 20%. This suggests inequality is spiralling.

Neofeudalism – the many serving the few is increasing – as described by Jodi Dean, a political theorist. History has shown us that inequality never dies peacefully – says Walter Scheidel in his book – The Great Leveller. The four levellers according to Scheidel that reduce inequality are – mass-mobilisation warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues. We will see.

In the member survey last year, the top priority area for CIEH to concentrate on was – Be the voice for EH and influencing the government on policy issues – a polling of 70%. Our predecessors such as Sir Edwyn Chadwick, Sir John Simon and Dr William Henry Duncan did not stay silent or speak quietly arguing for sanitary reform prior to the Public Health Act 1875.
Closer to my home is the introduction of a default 20mph speed limit in Wales. Studies now show this to be saving many lives and serious injuries and improving air quality. Yet there is still great resistance to it. To the point of disobedience and vandalism of speed signs and cameras.

Along with opposition to the speed limit comes aversion to measures on climate change, anti-discrimination initiatives, and progressive taxation. We are nowadays plagued with a class of politician whose chief skill is to plausibly excuse people from their responsibilities. Anything that is inconvenient can be waved off as ‘woke’ including EH initiatives that save lives.

Progress on these preventive issues demands that people accept perceived personal disadvantage in service of the greater good. It used to be the job of politicians to inspire the populace so that people were willing to play their part. President Kennedy’s ‘Ask not what your country can do for you,’ speech imagined society as a shared enterprise for the common good not instant gratification and avoidance of inconvenience for the individual.

The political philosopher David Marquand wrote The Decline of the Public – The Hollowing Out of Citizenship in 2006 in which he predicted accurately the course of British politics over the last twenty years. He dated the arrival of the public domain to the early years of the Victorian era, libraries, municipal undertakings such as sewerage and water supply, the Public Health Act 1875, the rise of professional bodies and the creation of the idea of active citizenship.

Marquand defined the Public Sphere as the sphere of our national life which is independent of the market. It includes welcoming public spaces, subsidised opera, safe food, clean water, blood donors, magistrates, the minimum wage and the rulings of the Health and Safety Executive to name some. Much of this is failing or under threat today.

A growing body of research shows that people who have social ties to family, friends or organisations are physically and mentally healthier than those who lead more isolated lives. What social online lives we lead today compared to just a generation ago. The concept of a shared reality on which we can all depend has dissolved as technology individualises leisure time, and with it perhaps any hope of a functioning democracy.

CIEH is calling for an All-Party Parliamentary Group, an APPG, on environmental health. We must achieve the formation of the APPG. Politics is a crucial and necessary part of these complex adaptive systems.

CIEH advocates for policies that align with its vision and raises concerns about specific policies.

How does Environmental Health lead effectively in complexity?

The first step is to stop searching for simple answers. In complex systems, there are rarely silver bullets – there are trade-offs, adaptations, and feedback loops. We must resist the pressure to reduce EH to regulatory checklists and compliance, when in fact it demands critical thinking, systems awareness, and moral and political courage.

Complexity is not the same as confusion or chaos. It may be difficult, but it is not disorganised. There is structure within it, if we choose to look with the right lens.

And that lens must be interdisciplinary, integrative and people-focused. Our profession has always been at its strongest when it operates at the interfaces: between policy and practice, evidence-based science and societal actions, local needs and national frameworks.

We are both generalists and specialists. We are technical experts and public servants. We
understand that the safety of a food outlet, the management of a landfill site, or the licensing of a festival, cannot be understood in isolation. To navigate all this, we need the three C’s – clarity, collaboration, and confidence.

• Clarity – In complex systems, clarity means asking the right questions, not having all the answers. We must articulate EH value beyond compliance – in terms of wellbeing, prevention, resilience, and justice. And we must stay strategic, focusing our efforts where we have the most impact and are able to change systems and practices for the better.
• Collaboration – We can’t do it alone. Tackling complexity requires partnerships across disciplines, sectors, and communities – housing, planning, environmental psychology, technology, and more. It also means deeper engagement with the communities we serve – not as passive recipients of service, but as co-creators of solutions or (as expounded by the philosopher, Martha C. Nussbaum) the capabilities approach to well-being. Collaboration isn’t always easy, it takes trust, humility, and openness, but it’s essential for lasting change.
• Confidence – Environmental Health is not a support function, it’s a cornerstone of public health. We must assert our role while reforming outdated practices, embracing new digital tools, including AI, and diversifying our profession. We must also invest in the next generation – not just as “regulators”, but as communicators, systems-thinkers, and change-makers.

Colleagues, complexity is not a threat – it is a reality. And in many ways, it is our greatest opportunity. Because who better than Environmental Health Practitioners to hold all the connections together? Who better to bridge public impact, environmental science and psychology, to bring rigour and empathy to the regulation of risk, and to clarify complexity?
In a complex system, no single actor holds all the power – but together, we adapt and respond. That’s our strength. That is environmental health.

This AGM is not just a chance to look back at a year of challenges overcome. It is a call to sharpen our vision for the future. CIEH has a new strategy. CIEH continues to be a beacon of professional integrity, policy leadership, and public value. And in this increasingly complex world, that role has never been more vital.

As our motto reminds us – Amicus Humani Generis – we are friends of the human race. In these turbulent times let us take that to heart, and deliver our vision of safer, cleaner and healthier environments for the benefit of all with clarity, collaboration and confidence.

To conclude – you will be relieved to hear

Not long ago, I read a splendid article on barnacles. I don’t want to give the wrong impression of the focus of my reading interests. Sometimes days go by without my reading about barnacles, much less remembering what I read.

However, this article had an unforgettable opening paragraph. “The barnacle” the author explained “is confronted with an existential decision about where it’s going to live. Once it decides … it spends the rest of its life with its head cemented to a rock.” End of quote.

For a good many on this planet, it comes to that, but not for the adaptable and ingenious environmental health professionals delivering EH. The dedicated and very important work of EHPs continues to be so necessary.

“Those who fear appearing foolish rarely discover or do anything new. The genius of tomorrow often looks like an idiot today.” Stay focussed. Be bold! Health above everything.

Diolch yn fawr / Thank you

You will find the AGM Agenda, related documents and voting results on the CIEH AGM webpage.