The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health is seeking views on a draft competence framework for local authority contaminated land regulators to help identify training requirements and ensure good and consistent practice.
The framework is designed to resemble the Institute's other competence frameworks and draws on work by the Standing Conference on Land Contamination including trials in local authorities and reflecting official guidance.
It was held up for a while by changes underway to university environmental health curricula as the framework will inform these degrees and in-service training needs.
"There's a lack of any single vision for what a local authority CLO does," says CIEH principal policy officer Howard Price.
"There are around 370 authorities who have different requirements for their CLOs. This takes the approach that people should ask the question that, in the context of their present job, what skills and knowledge do they need?"
The framework is not intended to be a performance management tool but is principally meant to identify training and development needs.
The framework begins with a set of non-regulatory competencies including behaviour, IT, organisation and numeracy.
The second part contains the specific contaminated land regulation competencies, divided into problem solving, core skills and knowledge and specialist applications.
The third part gives three examples of self-assessment forms and an explanation of how to use them.
Taken as a whole, the regulatory competencies represent the skill and knowledge requirements of the function rather than any given individual and the CIEH says few, if any, individuals will possess all the skills and knowledge within it.
It acknowledges that competent authorities will sometimes need to enlist specialist outside help in unusual situations.
Responses are required by 30 July.
