Student Placement Scheme at local authorities in England

Friday 17 March 2006

The Food Standards Agency invites local authorities in England to apply for funding for an additional Environmental Health Practitioner (EHP) or Trading Standards Officer (TSO) student placement at their authority.

For the last three years the Agency has funded a scheme in partnership with local authorities to help address the well-known difficulties in funding placements for environmental health and trading standards students. Placements are fundamental for enabling EHPs and TSOs qualify, and the lack of places is a significant contributory factor to the present recruitment problems for both professions.

The Agency, along with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Office of Fair Trading (OFT), Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services (LACORS), Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) and Trading Standards Institute (TSI), have recently reviewed the scheme and, because of its success, have decided that it should continue for the academic year 2006/07.

The Agency is pleased to report that over the last three years, nine students have benefited from the scheme and eight local authorities have participated.

Students in the scheme spend approximately six months with cental Government departments to acquire relevant experience of various Environmental Health or Trading Standards disciplines and six months at the local authority. The scheme is applicable to those EHP students completing either the CIEH Practical Training Logbook or the new Experiential Learning Portfolio (ELP), as well as those TSO students working to the new qualification framework.

For these new placements local authorities are responsible for recruiting, employing and paying the students. Central Government will pay local authorities an amount equivalent to the salary and on-costs they incur in respect of this employment (while the student is placed with central Government departments), and this should be at the same level as the period of placement with the local authority. For their time with central Government departments, students are seconded from local authorities under separate contracts. In addition to food, aspects of health & safety, pollution, contaminated land and noise nuisance for environmental health and consumer product safety, animal health and welfare, fair trading and metrology for trading standards are covered during the time students spend with central Government and its partners.

To be eligible to take part in the scheme from September/October 2006 local authorities need to show that they will be using the scheme to recruit an additional student above that planned initially. Interested local authorities should contact Bob Pilling:

Room 415C Aviation House
125 Kingsway
London WC2B 6NH
Email: robert.pilling@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk

Such expressions of interest should be received no later than 5 May 2006.

If you have any queries, please telephone Bob on 020 7276 8436.