ABSTRACT
The history of the environmental health service in the UK can be traced to the origins of British local government. In the local government reorganisation of 1974 the role of environmental health officers, which became the new name for public health inspectors, was given increased recognition with the publication of the Bains Report whose recommended structures were implemented by most of the new local authorities. The Local Government, Planning and Land Act in 1980 heralded a new approach to management practices in local government. Environmental health departments were therefore having increasingly to enter the new world of competition and markets. For many years local authorities have been urged to be more responsive to the wishes and needs of their communities. Accountability is a particularly important issue in public sector management as accountability is the link between bureaucracy and democracy. In 1997 the report of the Commission on Environmental Health was published by the Chartered Institute of environmental health.
