Minutes:
The Committee received an update on the areas of work covered by the Licensing and Environmental Health Teams and their successes over the past year.
Licensing and Environmental Health were statutory functions of the Council with the primary aims of protecting public health and controlling public nuisances. In respect of its licensing functions the Council also had the aims of safeguarding the vulnerable and encouraging the reduction of crime and disorder. Collectively there were over 700 active Licenses in the borough area, including premises licences, gambling licences and charity collection licences.
The pandemic had resulted in a reduction of the amount of licences held within the Borough, but an increase in workload for the Licensing and Environmental Health teams. There had been a significant increase in enquiries from businesses in respect of asking for advice on how to comply with the regulations and guidelines. In addition, going forward, responses from responsible bodies as consultees to temporary event licenses, were to become more important in order to ensure the holding of covid-secure events.
The Council’s Environmental Health team carried out services in respect of air quality, nuisances, contaminated land and the overseeing of pest contracts. This was in addition to food safety and health and safety services.
As a result of the pandemic, there were increased numbers of premises selling takeaways, which provided a different type of food safety risk, and still needed monitoring by the Environmental Health team. Despite the usual circumstances, inspections and food poisoning investigations were still taking place in person, with the necessary risk assessments in place. Whilst there had been decreases in cases such as stray dog complaints, there had been significant increases in noise complaints across the borough and the amount of bonfire complaints had approximately doubled within the past year.
Covid-19 had also offered a new stream of work which came under environmental health, and together with the Covid Marshalls, the Environmental Health team had conducted over 2000 visits to premises to ensure compliance, as well as parks and playgrounds.
Arising from Members’ comments it was recognised that there was a balance to be struck in respect of food safety enforcement. During the pandemic there had been various informal community initiatives which entailed the cooking and dropping off of meals. Whilst under the Food Safety Act infrequent, informal services perhaps wouldn’t need to register as a food premises, the Environmental Health team were always keen to liaise with such services in order to provide advice on best practice.
Whilst the Environmental Health team was aiming to proactively engage with the borough’s premises in the form of mail shots, via the Economic Development Newsletter and via attendance of Pubwatch meetings, there was a perceived shortfall in respect of the guidance that businesses were receiving from the Council about the reopening process. It was agreed that there was an opportunity for the Council to hold a virtual engagement event with the Borough’s businesses to offer support in respect of reopening of bars, pubs and restaurants in May. In addition, there was a need to ensure that the Council’s website was up to date in respect of resources and information to allow businesses to successfully reopen as social distancing restrictions eased.
It was remarked that despite difficulties in being able to cover the whole of the borough, the Covid Marshalls had done an excellent job in encouraging adherence to the social distancing rules. The marshalls worked closely with the Environmental Health team which conducted any necessary enforcement work in respect of businesses, whilst it was acknowledged that it was the Police’s responsibility to breakup any large gatherings. In addition, the Committee showed its dismay at the shared reports that a number of Covid Marshalls and Covid Ambassadors had received abuse as a result of the undertaking of their roles, and that a number of ambassadors had resigned from their roles as a result. The Executive Head of Community agreed to discuss this further with the Police.
RESOLVED that the update be noted.