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A day in the life of an Environmental Health Officer

My name is Mrs Ferrero. I am an Environmental Health Officer and work in the Environmental Health department at East Devon District Council. I have worked at East Devon District Council for 15 years.

To be an Environmental Health Officer you need a degree, which is usually a four year course - one year of which is spent with a local authority working as an EHO and getting experience of the various parts of the job. I also have a specialist Diploma in health and safety. There are several other specialist courses in housing, pollution, acoustics or food safety also available if you want to specialise in certain areas.

Once you have qualified you can become a member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, and still need to do regular training courses to keep yourself up to date with new legislation and technical advances. The Institute requires you do at least thirty hours of training a year to keep your membership.

There are three sections in the Service, and I work in the Commercial Team. We are responsible for routine inspections of food premises, and inspecting other workplaces for health and safety compliance. We receive complaints from members of the public about situations they consider unsafe, accidents and illnesses they think could be connected to food they have eaten. A typical day would consist of visiting the office to collect the files needed for the days work, and then going out to visit a café, shop or residential home to inspect the kitchens, then a shop, office or warehouse to do a health and safety inspection. I may visit a member of the public to collect a loaf of bread with a screw in, or meet someone about to start a business to discuss what they need to think about to comply with the law. Then I generally go back to the office to complete the records of every visit that we have to keep.

What I most enjoy about my job is the variety of things that I could be asked to do, and getting out of the office to meet people in their own homes or workplaces to see what they are doing and help them solve their problems.

What I least enjoy about my job is that sometimes there can be a lot of paperwork to complete.

If I was not an EHO I would like to be a cartographer.

My proudest achievement is getting my Health and Safety Diploma.

The reason I chose to work in Local Government is that I have the ability to make a difference to people, we make sure dirty and unsafe businesses clean up or close down, so we improve conditions for everyone else by enforcing the laws that are there to protect people.

Good Luck in your chosen career!!

Page last updated on 24 May 2012