Agenda item

EWalker went through the report and shared the key points. There had been a reduction in the KPI for high at risk food premises and the quarter 3 result is at 61% and the year to date at 40%. The main reasons for this were that the Officers had been diverted to Covid-19 enforcement work, the food standards agency had suspended the food inspection programme during the first lockdown and their inability to visit certain premises which had been closed during the most recent lockdown. Another reason was the precautionary reduction in visits to higher risk settings such as care homes. However, 95% of fly tips were visited by an enforcement officer within 3 working days, which continued to be a priority. The environmental health team had been very busy with the Covid-19 outbreak plan in quarter 3 setting up test and trace for complex contact tracing, which had gone live in December and 3 staff had been recruited to this service, which is funded by the HCC contained fund. Supermarkets had also been targeted with Covid compliance checks.

Cllr Birnie asked EWalker to clarify “the HCC contained fund”.

EWalker explained that this was a fund held by the County Council or the Local Resilience Forum aimed at the containment of Covid -19. The team had made a successful bid for that fund which also covered the Covid compliance officers.

EWalker continued that visits had been made to high risk premises, including distribution centres, which had experienced more than one case of Covid within the workforce. This had been followed up with visits to hairdressers and barbers for Covid compliance. Joint visits had also been carried out with the police, a working group on self-isolation checks on people who should be isolating had been set up and beer mats had been provided to the licencing team to remind patrons of social distancing rules in pubs. In addition, mask compliance checks at supermarket had been carried out where 97% of 1000 people checked had been compliant and complaints by members of the public had also been followed up

The Environmental Health team had successfully prosecuted Hemel Food Centre in the Marlowes for Health and Safety offences relating to a breach of a prohibition notice. This resulted in a £30,000 fine plus £4,000 costs awarded to the Council.

The Corporate Health and Safety team had continued to support departments in drafting and redrafting Covid-19 risk assessments in line with the changing guidelines and the 400 pieces of recent legislation that had been issued regarding Covid-19.

In Q3 the operations team had issued 16 fixed penalty notices for fly tipping and 3 FPN’s for duty of care offences and one littering FPN and 6 vehicles were seized and removed. The enforcement team had a significant backlog with 6 cases pending prosecution but delayed in the courts due to Covid.

She was pleased to report that Russel Ham a Team Leader had been awarded a staff award and that Colin Lee-Dade, Pest Control Officer, had won customer service star of the year and also runner up employee of the year..

Cllr Riddick noted that in the last 12 months a lot of businesses had moved over to takeaway services and he asked how this had impacted on the inspections workload of the teams.

EWalker said that the suspension of the food inspection programme for quarter 1 had a knock on effect in quarters 2 and 3. Coupled with the present lockdown this had resulted in some of the lower risk premises not being inspected.  Priority work to deal with imminent risk to health issues had however continued but staff performance in food safety had slowed right down.

Cllr Riddick responded that a lot of people had moved into what he would call enthusiastic amateur status and they may not be aware of all the obligations in dealing with food products for the public.

EWalker agreed and the team has had lots of enquiries for guidance and assistance, which they had continued to provide.

Cllr Ransley asked about inspections in closed premises for legionella disease.

EWalker confirmed that this was something of particular concern and the team had written to and had been visiting the sectors that were re-opening and had put a programme in place for the week commencing the 12^th April to highlight that very risk.

Cllr Stevens referred to clause 4.6, which mentioned staff to be provided online training for setting up a reception centre in the event that the emergency plan were activated. He asked what this meant and who evoked the emergency plan. He also suggested to the Chairman that the committee should allocate time to have a briefing on this.

EWalker explained that all public bodies are required to have such a plan in case there should be an emergency situation, such as a flood or explosion. District councils are required to set up reception centres if part of their community were unable to access their properties as a result of a disaster. The reason this reception centre training had been carried out now was because of the additional challenge of social distancing owing to Covid. She offered to set up some training for members if this was considered useful.

Cllr Birnie referred to point 4.5 and asked what the robotics programme was.

EWalker explained that in conjunction with the innovation team the department had been looking at the use of robotics to carry out repetitive. For example, adding information to a database in the correct place in the electronic filing cabinet.

Cllr Birnie said he would be interested to see how they progress with that as it seemed it could be useful across the Council. His final point referred to item 5.3 and he asked why the team had been out with the police.

EWalker said that the joint operation was to enforce the town centre PSPO against rogue cyclists.

The report was noted