Food safety conference
Jenny Morris
Jenny Morris, chief policy officer for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), spoke about what changes could occur for local authority inspections.
Morris: “What the local authorities (LA) are saying is that they are suffering a greater burden of cuts than other parts of government.
“I’m not saying that [the number of inspectors] shouldn’t go down, but it should be focused on what we need … I have heard that the food industry is concerned by some of the skills of the [remaining] inspectors.”
Some 139 environmental health departments responded to a survey of local authorities in England conducted by the CIEH, which represented 43% of the total.
“When asked about how environmental health services are delivered, 82.6% said they were delivered in house, while 0.8% [two to three local authorities] were outsourced.“[In addition] 6.1% were integrated or shared [between different local authorities]; 10.6% had other/mixed arrangements.”