People living in Wales are being urged to complete a short survey to help a major new study being launched by the Wales Audit Office into Environmental Health Services.

The investigation is looking into how well local councils are delivering the wide-ranging services that fall into the category of environmental health. These include:

• assessing the quality of homes people live in;
• looking at the safety of places where people work;
• checking the hygiene of where people eat and where food is produced;
• reducing the causes and effects of air pollution;
• dealing with problems from noise and anti-social behaviour;
• controlling pests; and
• managing dogs and their owners

The review team want to hear from people who have used these services to find out what their experience was like; how effective their council was at dealing with their issue; and how aware they are of changes in these services brought about by reductions in the amount of money councils have to spend on services.

You can complete the short, anonymous, survey by visiting our My Healthy Town website [Opens in new window] which provides a link to the survey as well as some further information.

All of the opinions captured will help the study team identify specific issues that can be further investigated in their work. The findings will be published in a national report by the Auditor General for Wales next year.

Auditor General for Wales, Huw Vaughan Thomas said today:

To truly understand the picture of environmental  health in Wales, we need to hear from those who are using these services.. I really hope that as many people as possible will complete this short survey, so that we can get a wide spread of information from across Wales. This will help us provide an honest assessment of how well councils are doing with less money and what needs to improve - to better serve our communities.