Environmental Health

The Council's Environmental Health department has a number of responsibilities:

Controlling registration of all food premises
Inspecting high health risk premises
Investigating complaints about housing
Providing disabled facilities grants to people in need in the borough
Planning and implementing health promotion campaigns, such as Noise Action Day and Food Safety Week
Investigating complaints of noise from domestic or commercial premises
Investigating problems relating to dust and odour
Dealing with contaminated land in the Borough
Removing vehicles that have been abandoned on any open land or highway and charging for its removal and disposal
Monitoring local air quality and, by means of permits, controlling certain processes that may be detrimental to air quality

We interact with various departments and outside organisations in the following areas:

Social Services and Housing in relation to the Council's housing strategy
We provide air quality information and data to the Council's transport strategy
Within our own department we are statutory consultees in relation to licensing and planning issues including the town centre redevelopment
We work with the Health Protection Agency in relation to infectious disease and public health issues.
We are Home Authority to Waitrose Ltd in relation to food safety, which means we provide advice to the company and coordinate the enforcement action by other local authorities.

Our performance is monitored both by the Council's own performance management process and by the following outside bodies: