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Technical Profile

Stewart Petrie

Environmental health practitioner


• Where do you work and what do you do?
 
I work as an environmental health consultant, largely in the north of England and the midlands. My work covers both the public and private sectors. I have also been active in international environmental health, helping to forge twinning arrangements, including with colleagues in Tanzania, and to set up the charity Water for Kids.
 
• What attracted you to working in environmental health?
 
Originally it was the job security, a pension, and to do ‘something useful’ in the public sector.
 
• What is the biggest challenge in your job?
 
Keeping up to date with best practice and keeping an open mind to new possibilities.  
 
• What do you like most about your job?
 
The people, both colleagues and the ‘punters’.
 
• What do you like the least?
 
The paperwork, the bureaucracy and the inordinate length of time it seems to take to get things moving in the public sector.
 
• What single legislative change would make your job easier?
 
The phasing in of mandatory licensing of all rented residential accommodation through local authority and/or third party regimes.
 
• What change would most benefit the environmental health profession?
 
An increased confidence of the profession in itself coupled with a divorce from the ‘local government’ mentality.
  
• What do you like to do in your spare time?
 
Read good books, listen to good music and drink good wine.