Origins of the CIEH
The 19th century pioneers
The CIEH’s history can be traced back to the 1840s. Edwin Chadwick, a Poor Law Commissioner, conducted an inquiry into the causes of poverty which concluded that people often became poor because of ill health due to a bad environment.
The big problems of the day were typhus, cholera, tuberculosis and industrial accidents. These were common ailments that frequently resulted in death. Chadwick believed that improving the environment – and therefore reducing ill health – depended on good engineering rather than medicine. His report, The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, published in 1842, became an unlikely bestseller.
Public Health Act 1848
After a long fight by Chadwick and other campaigners, a Bill was introduced into Parliament which led to the Public Health Act 1848. The Act created a General Board of Health which could approve the establishment of Local Boards of Health in areas of need. Local Boards had to appoint an officer of health, a surveyor and an inspector of nuisances.
The surveyor was a civil engineer whose main task was to put in place a safe water supply and improved sewage system. The inspector of nuisances was the forerunner of today’s environmental health practitioner and the first to be appointed was Thomas Fresh.
Fresh was appointed Inspector of Nuisances for the City of Liverpool under the provisions of the Liverpool Sanitary Act 1847. Working alongside the city’s first Officer of Health, William Duncan, and its first Surveyor, James Newland, he did much to create a cleaner, healthier Liverpool. He is today commemorated in a prestigious speaking event, the Thomas Fresh Lecture.
Getting organised
Following the Public Health Act 1848, the number of inspectors of nuisance increased year by year. Small groups of inspectors got together to form associations. The Association of Public Sanitary Inspectors – the organisation that was eventually to become the CIEH – was formed in London in 1883.
As their duties changed, the title inspector of nuisances was formally dropped. After the First World War, sanitary inspector became the recognised title for the job of environmental health practitioners. By this time, vaccination programmes were preventing killer diseases such as smallpox and homes had fresh drinking water and piped sewage systems.
Training through the decades
The Public Health (London) Act 1891 required sanitary inspectors to gain the Certificate of the Sanitary Inspectors Examination Board. The qualification was updated in 1942, with the introduction of a three-stage Diploma Examination in Sanitary Science and Administration.
In 1951, a Ministry of Health working party examined the training of sanitary inspectors. A new diploma that was completed after formal training helped raise standards. This led to another change in title, to public health inspector. Environmental health finally became a graduate profession in the 1960s, when diplomas were phased out and replaced by degree courses.
The 1970s, ’80s and ’90s
In 1974, general public health work became the responsibility of the National Health Service. Environmental health work remained in local government. Today, the CIEH continues to promote the importance and standing of environmental health in local government as well as in a range of other organisations.
In 1980 the Association of Public Health Inspectors became the Institution of Environmental Health Officers. A Royal Charter was granted four years later and in 1994 it became a Chartered Institute. The CIEH was born.
