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Council Cuts Begin To Hit Health And Safety Evidence of the effect of the cuts has been highlighted after one of the country's biggest councils stated that it cannot afford to recruit enough EHOs. Liverpool City Council has admitted that hundreds of unrated food businesses are not being inspected because it has less than half the staff it needs to do the work. Auditors from the Food Standards Agency criticised the authority for not meeting inspection targets and in 2009-10 only managed 46 per cent of their planned inspections - 925 out of 1,992. According to the report, just 5.8 full-time equivalent posts were filled out of a total of 12.5 posts during that year. A council spokesperson said, “In the light of the recent comprehensive spending review and its implications for Liverpool City Council, it is unlikely that the city will be able to recruit additional staff to enforce the statutory food plan. Liverpool will be hit particularly hard by the government's overall cuts in both mainstream and grant funding.” EHOs do not only enforce food safety, they also inspect a range of other premises for health and safety breaches and it is claimed that this function will be hit even harder as funding cuts hit. TUC Head of Health and Safety, Hugh Robertson stated: “Local councils are meant to visit every food premises once a year. However there is no requirement on them to make regular health and safety inspections on premises. This means that many premises are never visited. Last month Lord Young actually suggested that more time should be spend on inspecting food premises which will mean even less resources available for the remaining workplaces. This will mean that more people will be killed, injured or develop an occupational disease simply because no-one is going round employers checking that employers are obeying the law.” Source: TUC Risks
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