Food and Health & Safety Service Plan 2023-24 - Flipbook - Page 45
RESOURCES
4.3 Staff Development Plan
Our workforce is at the heart of everything we do. One of the ways we support the
development and competence of sta昀昀 is through ongoing training and development
provided in-house and externally.
To meet this challenge, we have created an opportunity for 昀椀ve council employees to be
apprentice environmental health practitioners. We believe this was the largest number of
environmental health apprenticeships starting together in any local authority in 2021/23. It
attracted the attention of the professional body (the Chartered Institute of Environmental
Health) and much professional news coverage.
This is developing our sta昀昀 and helping to address the challenge of recruiting environmental
health practitioners in the future. Having started with a September 2021 enrolment on the
Environmental Health Practitioner Apprenticeship (Level 6), one member of the Food and
Safety Team and one member of SCPHA are working in the professional 昀椀eld whilst studying
for a degree at the same time. Other recruits are working within Environmental Protection.
In 2021/23, we responded to the FSA’s revised 2021 Competency Framework by reviewing the
arrangements we have in place against the framework. O昀케cers with responsibility for carrying
out o昀케cial controls maintain their own competency framework record, which is developed as
further knowledge and skills are acquired.
We will continue to work in partnership with our colleagues in SCPHA to meet competency
requirements, given that we all carry out o昀케cial controls.
Environmental Health Practitioner
Apprenticeship (Level 6)
The four-year course has been
developed through consultation
with the Chartered Institute of
Environmental Health and the
Institute for Apprenticeships, along
with employers from a range of
public and environmental health
related 昀椀elds.
Two of our current apprentices,
Nikki Crisp and Hannah Gilson
WE ARE EASTSUFFOLK
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