Invitees

Dave Holland - Head of Shared Regulatory Services

Councillor Dhanisha Patel - Cabinet Member for Future Generations and Wellbeing

Kelly Watson - Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services

The Head of the Shared Regulatory Service gave a presentation on the work of the Service over the past eighteen months. He advised that the Shared Regulatory Service had been previously set up by the three Councils at a time they were struggling to delivery their Environmental Health, Trading Standards and Licensing Service in the light of some quite challenging budget pressures. He explained the collaborative idea is unique in Wales in the way they work. He explained they had set five priorities which he ran through as part of the presentation along with their vision in 2015.  He advised that in March 2020 when lockdown commenced and people could only leave their homes for limited purposes, this began a new series of events for the Shared Regulatory Service, as they had the public health responsibility of the Local Authority for Bridgend and the Public Health Act. Since March 2020 they had aligned their resources into three key workstreams: Test Trace and Protect, Covid Enforcement and Advice and Nuisance and Community matters, along with continuing to undertake interventions on high-risk issues, food hygiene and housing.

The Head of the Shared Regulatory Service presented a timeline for the Service over the last eighteen months through the pandemic, described the other areas still being worked on and looked into, the enforcement approach and improvement and closure notices that had been served. Away from the coronavirus issues the Shared Regulatory Service had been in the Crown Court a lot in 2021 as the Courts had started to deal with the backlog of work.  While the Service had a lot of people working in TTP and with the Police on Coronavirus enforcement, he assured the Committee that Food Safety and Public Health Work had continued with a number of interventions in Bridgend town centre. He advised that empty property work and animal welfare work had continued. He explained that they were measuring how the service was performing and drew attention to the extremely capable group of officers working in the Team all of whom wanted to do a good job. He concluded that their challenges continued with resources reducing and the need to prioritise and he would work with the Chief Executive and the Chief Officer, Legal, HR and Regulatory Services to understand what Bridgend needed as a priority to deliver services. 

A Member expressed what a phenomenal job they had been doing with visiting all the premises and going above and beyond their previous roles and was reassured about the ongoing food safety and public health work.  She asked for reassurance that the continuing issue of horses in the local area and problems with plastic burning constantly in a rural area. would continue to be addressed, to protect animals.

The Head of the Shared Regulatory Service provided assurance that the work was on-going, and the issues would continue to be addressed.  He explained that work around noise and pollution issues had escalated as people stayed home and experienced noisy / annoying neighbours and following intervention threats to Officers had also increased. He expressed that the joint enforcement team of the Police had been one way they were addressing this.

A Member referring to business investigations for non-compliance of Covid measures was pleased to see that the philosophy was to provide advice and education before financial penalties, however there would be some occasions when they would have to enforce financial penalties and he wondered when these were incurred to what extent was that information shared with other colleagues in the Council e.g. Business Grants Team, as he felt it would be unacceptable for those that had been non-compliant to get grants ahead of those that had not been.

The Head of the Shared Regulatory Service advised that their philosophy had been to start with advice and then move to persuasion as the regulatory controls move through different levels, and the alert levels changed and it had been difficult for the enforcement agency to understand those changes and embed them, and for the business community. Where there had been persistent poor practice, they would impose penalties and every time they had intervened, they had publicised the actions they took against those businesses on the SRS website, as required by law.  He advised that pre-lockdown they had more interaction with colleagues in the Council, however since operating remotely they may be a gap to examine and address.

The Member referred to the empty property work which he presumed had been to provide residential accommodation and asked were there any incentives for people to bring those empty properties back into habitable use.  He added that pre-pandemic he did not recall ever having to make any referrals for rats and vermin, but since lockdown he had made quite a few. It had been explained to him that one of the reasons had been due to a lot of the town centre cafes, bars and restaurants had closed down and the rats had gone further afield to find their food, and he asked whether as places had opened back up was the latest number of complaints still as high.

The Head of the Shared Regulatory Service advised that Pest Control was delivered through a contract arrangement with the Mighty Organisation, and he did not have that information.  During lockdown they did see an increase in complaints associated with premises not being used, nature reclaiming them and reports of rats in and around those types of premises, so they would look at that under the Prevention of Damage by Pest Act. With regard to the empty homes there was a complete package put together with their input primarily being the law enforcement.  The Council made packages available to bring these properties back into reuse. He expressed they were an important element in terms of not just giving people homes but improving the appearance of local communities. He commented that local investment and local businesses being more likely to come into the area if it looks like a nicer place and empty homes were often a blight on that appearance.

The Chief Officer, Legal, HR and Regulatory Services advised that for Bridgend Pest Control did not sit within the Shared Regulatory Service and advised that there had been a recent report to Cabinet as the contract was due for renewal.

The Cabinet Member for Wellbeing and Future Generations advised that on the website there were a range of support packages for people with empty properties. She explained that last month she had announced in the Council meeting with regard to getting private landlords to rent to them which was something they had done if people were struggling to rent their property. She advised there were also lots of grants available. She clarified that the report to Cabinet regarding Pest Control had been in September.

A Member thanked the team for the support to their communities through what must had been a horrendous time for them all. He explained that one slide in the presentation had indicated the number of improvement notices served in the County Borough of Bridgend exceeded the number of notices served in Cardiff. He continued that when you considered scale it may have suggested some form of disproportion and would there have been a particular reason behind that. The Member also queried with so much multi-discipline responsibility that they had, so many competing priorities how they assessed demand in terms of business continuity and how are they able to fulfil their obligations to all those disciplines at a time when there would be many competing priorities.

The Head of the Regulatory Service advised there were times when they had felt they were being pulled in many directions which was why they continued to have a dialogue about what Bridgend needed and why they have dialogue with the Welsh Government and Westminster Government about their priorities. It would then be a process of rationalising and determining where they could have the most impact and provide the greatest benefits. Their Coronavirus work they were clear they needed to be in and around the care homes, as the most vulnerable in the community, they were clear they needed to help the Health and Safety Team around schools, the vulnerable young people there and the potential to limit and spread of the virus. Food has an immediate effect on our health he continued, housing was a more insidious slow creep, that if they did not deal with poor quality housing then people’s lifespans could be reduced quite significantly. He advised it was a constant reassessment of the need and where they could have most impact and where their resource would be best placed. With regard to the number of notices in Bridgend he advised there were three officers, one covers Bridgend, one the Vale and one Cardiff who meet regularly and seek to be consistent in their application and respond to what they have found. He continued that he had not expected there to be a uniform of notices, Bridgend had been slightly higher but that reflected what was found and the response from some of the businesses with a number of them challenging what those notices asked of them. He was confident that a good job had been done and would not draw to much from the notices, he believed that what they would eventually see would be a reasonably good compliant business community taking its responsibility seriously.

The Member advised he was reassured in terms of the disproportionate number and he was interested in what local assessments are undertaken before they engage with SRS.

A Member gave thanks for all the work prior to Covid and throughout and asked with regard to the current situation with TTC how pubs were responding and dealing with things. He gave two examples of going into pubs where in one there were 100 people and no masks but in contrast visiting another for lunch and masks being worn and track and trace details logged. The Member’s concern was that there was obviously still confusion on how pubs and clubs are dealing with it and tracking people.

The Head of the Regulatory Service advised that the law required businesses to take reasonable measures to prevent the spread of the virus from / in their premises, as the infection rate rose, the reasonable measures changed from when the infection rate had been lower. One of those measures had been to collect details of who was on the premises, although he advised not all businesses do it, and the challenge they would have would be at what point would they think the business had become unreasonable in not doing certain things and would they need to intervene. The Head of the Regulatory Service expressed that the absurdities of controls where people were now allowed quite close interaction with no face masks and yet when entering a shop there was still a requirement to wear one.  It was a policy issue under regular review by Welsh Government.

A Member praised the Team as all his communication had received timely, effective, helpful and sympathetic responses. He had also been frequently updated without having to press on some of the more complex issues, as a referrer on many issues in their domain and as someone associated with the community centre who had to negotiate the complexities of particularly Covid requirements and the multiple activities within that community centre.

The Head of the Regulatory Service expressed that community centres were interesting last year as they had anomalies of thirty people being able to go in and do an exercise class, but you could not have five young children practice their recorders or brass band instruments and they had done their best to try and communicate that through.

The Cabinet Member for Wellbeing and Future Generations wanted to thank the Committee for all their positive comments. She was aware that SRS was not often an attendee in Bridgend Committees. She also wanted to put on record her thanks to the staff at SRS who had gone across to help the pandemic response on the TTC side of things. She explained that the staff had had to pick up a lot as mentioned previously, the SRS trained their staff well and a lot of work had gone on behind the scenes to make sure that the performance had not dipped. She advised that they did need to be mindful as recruitment was an issue across the Local Authority.

The Head of the Regulatory Service advised that Cardiff Metropolitan University was the university that trained Environmental Health Officers and that numbers on the course had dwindled significantly over recent years, but as part of their efforts to deal with the coronavirus challenges and continue the work that they are tasked with they recruited 25-30 of those students over the months to help with that work. As officers had left the permanent work force some of those students had joined them permanently, so there was a flow of staff into the organisation to train and develop. He admitted it was an ongoing challenge to get young people into the service and to get them the skills that they needed, and they were keen to recruit the right kinds of individuals that could engage with the community. She thanked the Head of the Regulatory Service for doing an outstanding job.

The Committee made the following Recommendations:

1.    Have a written response in relation to how priorities are assessed locally to engage the services of SRS.

2.    Members enquired about further information as to whether there had been an increase in the volumes of rats in order to determine if this was a local issue.

Members recommended the sharing of data internally, in respect of the awarding of grants, for non-compliant businesses.