Western Group Environmental Health Service - Derry City Council

NI have exactly the statutory, quality management, role that Professor Lofstedt envisaged for the HSE and deliver the desired outcomes in termsof effective enforcement and efficient policy-making.Better Regulation has become a widely used term in recent years and has seen politicians of all parties and departments and sections withingovernment departments take strong positions suggesting and supporting the view that there is a need for radical reviews of legislation on theone hand, and also for changes to the way regulators enforce legislation. All regulators, of whatever type, seem to be considered to operatewithin a “tick box” culture, to be over-zealous, to misunderstand the needs of businesses. As a result of this development, central governmentdepartments are reviewing regulations with a view to reducing the burden on business and at the same time standards for enforcementpractice are being reviewed with recommendations that the regulators should ensure that they provide advice on compliance, are transparentand proportionate in their requirements of businesses and consistent in their application across all businesses. Without wishing to make anyclaims that the Environmental Health Service is better or worse than any other regulator, it clear that, almost universally, the service adopted allof these standards in their initial form in the early 1990s, formalised them by adoption of the Enforcement Concordat in the late 1990s andmore recently also by incorporating the requirements of the Regulator’s Compliance Code into council policies and procedures.It is evident that for the majority of Environmental Health Officers in Northern Ireland the principles of Better Regulation have been in place sincebefore their careers started. It is accepted that staff employed in regulatory functions are human, errors will occur and some variation in approach willbe inevitable. That is why arrangements are put in place to provide policy and procedural documents, to monitor standards of advice, education andenforcement, to help officers to make judgements that are as far as possible consistent with those of their colleagues in the same situation. NorthernIreland has these arrangements in place by virtue of the cross linkages between environmental health staff working in the Group system and thoseworking in the District Councils. They do not need Better Regulation that is merely re-badged Old Regulation but merely some stability to continue toprovide the standard of service that for them has always been the norm.Alderman Jack RankinChairman of Western Group Committee 2011-124