Agenda item

The Community Environmental Health and Trading Standards Manager, Worcestershire Regulatory Services presented the Board with a detailed information report on Covid related activity.

Members were informed that WRS had been at the heart of the response to the Covid 19 pandemic. Initially, back in March 2020, the then Minister, Matt Hancock designated both Environmental Health Officers and Trading Standards Officers automatically as those responsible for enforcing business restrictions. This continued until July 2021 while controls remained in place under various iterations of regulations made under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984.

A dedicated team was carved out of the Community Environmental Health division, supplemented with others from around the service to deliver controls on the ground, whilst the Trading Standards team focused its very small resource on scams, which grew massively and the issues around fake and non-compliant PPE entering the market.

As well as this, we embedded a group of Environmental Health Officers in the Local Outbreak Response team, where the skills they had for dealing with outbreaks like TB, Legionella and Food Poisoning, could be put to good use addressing issues that arose on business premises and generally providing support to what was bound to be a relatively inexperienced team built from scratch.

WRS also picked up responsibility for delivering a coordinated Covid Marshal scheme across the County, although given marshal sounds like someone with an enforcement role, we designated them Covid Advisors, to better fit their role. This led onto the service picking up responsibility for delivering “Lost to Follow-up” activity, attempting to contact those infected people who the national NHS Test and Trace service had failed to contact.  This led to the service being asked to run the local contact tracing telephone system when Government decided it wanted to start handing responsibility down to local areas and allowing “lost to follow-up to become directly integrated into this operation.

Finally, we have been able to appoint a part-time communications officer to help report on all of these activities and also to keep our day to day activities in the public eye.

The report covered the following areas in detail:

·         Covid Advisors

·         Contact Tracing and Lost to Follow Up

·         Covid Business Enforcement (including Events and Large Capacity spaces.

·         Local Outbreak Response Team.

The Community Environmental Health and Trading Standards Manager, drew Members’ attention to the trial for one of the few cases for business non-compliance of the Covid regulations that ended up in Court, as detailed on page 38 of the main agenda report.

Members further referred to the conclusion of the Judge, that the Council was entirely right to issue the prohibition notices, with Members congratulating officers on their hard work.

Councillor E. Stokes, Wychavon District Council, requested that sincere thanks to regulatory services be recorded, for pursuing this case, which officers had tried to resolve before issuing the prohibition notices; and the positive conclusion made by District Judge Strongman.  Officers were to be congratulated for their hard work.

The Chairman took the opportunity to express sincere thanks and admiration on behalf of the Board to all WRS officers.

The Head of Regulatory Services responded to questions with regard to the recent bird flu (avian influenza) outbreak and in doing so, highlighted that wild birds were not regulated.  There was no requirement or legal duty for district councils to become involved, only if dead birds were found on public land, but that a number of the districts were supporting residents by collecting dead birds for disposal. He added that dead wild waterfowl or other dead wild birds should be reported directly to DEFRA. The Head of Regulatory Services also explained that, when it came to domestic flocks of poultry, Avian influenza was a notifiable disease and therefore fell within the remit of the County Council’s Trading Standards service that WRS manages on its behalf.  Officers from the Trading Standards team had been involved with two bird flu outbreaks so far this Winter, one of which required some cross border working with Warwickshire County Council’s officers. The Trading Standards team were visiting to check on flocks, within the 3 kilometre protection zone and would also have a role in enforcing movement controls in the 10 kilmetre surveillance zone. 

The work was particularly time consuming and this had meant that everyone in the team was helping.  

Public Health England advice remained that avian influenza was primarily a disease of birds and the risk to the general public’s health was very low.

RESOLVED that the Information Report – Covid related activity be noted, and that Members use the contents of the report in their own reporting back to their respective partner authority.