World of work

When I was not re-elected to parliament on 6 May 2010, there was one consolation. I really did have more time to spend with my family. After thirteen years of living most weeks away from my wife Elaine, I had, truly, great pleasure in being at home with Elaine. She was still out at work every day, getting home quite late. I was glad to be able to cook meals which were ready for eating as soon as she came in through the front door.
Of course I had to search for a new job and I set to with a will. I had helped enough constituents who found themselves jobless in their 50′s to know that it was going to be tough. I was willing to be flexible as to the kind of work I was willing to do. But being honest with myself, I really wanted a job to do with the environment and sustainable development.
I found there were few jobs advertised that fitted with my passion for all things green and so I applied also for many jobs in other areas that interest me – for example, law jobs involving speaking up for children in public law proceedings like care proceedings and I remember a job advertised about raising awareness of issues around autism in the criminal justice system.
Most of the jobs I applied for were located in Staffordshire and the West Midlands more widely.
I applied for just one job located in London – and guess what, that’s the job I’ve got!
So now I am head of policy for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. My office is in SE1.
Yes, it has the same down-side of parting me from Elaine for much of each week. But it has, which is why I love it, the scope for me to achieve good things for other people, especially in relation to many green issues.
To start with, everyone who works at the CIEH is friendly and helpful. This makes the work environment great. Then just consider the areas of life environmental health affects – air quality and protection from pollution, food safety and nutrition, health and safety at work, housing conditions and the wider public health agenda.
The coalition government has said it will set up a new Public Health Service in 2012 and we at the CIEH believe that this offers us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that Environmental Health considerations, and Environmental Health Practitioners in particular, will be an integral part of the new Service.
You see we believe that sometimes there is a narrow view that public health is a subset of “health” seen through the prism of what the NHS does. Yet in reality, good public health requires a healthy natural environment, clean air and water, good drainage, healthy food, a balanced diet and plenty of physical exercise, a home that is warm and properly maintained, a safe working environment – and increasingly, planning for the coming effects of climate change.
Climate change is already happening: temperatures are rising, there are more unpredictable severe weather events like intense heatwaves and excessive sudden rainfall causing flooding. It is necessary to adapt to the claimate change we can no longer stop completely and this means better flood protection for homes, coastal areas and critical infrastructure. It means planning for saving lives from both excessive cold and excessive heat. It means expecting the unexpected.
Then beyond adapting to existing climate change, we’ve got to go much further in taking action to prevent – mitigate is the word everyone uses because it isn’t realistic to stop climate change in its tracks -further climate change. In this case “we” most definitely refers to the entire global population. We cannot do this solely as one country in the world, although we can act directly to reduce our 2 per cent or so contribution to carbon emissions.
In the case of the Environmental Health professionals, we can also see that with climate change will come new health challenges in the UK for citizens, for animals and for plantlife. More temperate winters, wetter winters, and hotter, drier summers, will change the patterns of health threats to all species. It’s up to us to warn, advise and prepare.
So once again in my career, I face one big down-side in working away from home. But I face plenty of challenges to keep me occupied and energised in my day job. And that, at any rate, is something I relish.

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