Peter Wright has been involved behind the scenes at the Health and Safety Executive and the Food Standards Agency and was behind the first local authority environment unit in the early 1990s, while still finding time and energy to devote to international basketball... Last year he became public health partnership manager for West Herts health authority - making him one of a handful of EHOs to take up work on the "other side" of the health fence. He talks to Cathy Savage about his career

Positive attitude virtually shines from Peter Wright. He has the enthusiastic and open smile of someone starting out in his career, rather than someone reaching its summit. He's attentive, energetic and is careful to call people by their names - a courteous trick he was taught by Watford football team manager Graham Taylor. As he talks about his career he generously and meticulously lists those who he's admired (including Graham Taylor), or who have helped or supported him, or gone on to even greater things themselves. The past year for Peter has been a hectic one. He is chairing the CIEH's health and safety committee, he spent four months building bridges with the team that would grow to form the Food Standards Agency, and he's now a local authority fish swimming in a health authority pond. He looks like he's enjoying himself.

Peter qualified in 1970 from a shortlived course at Herts College of Building - just a stone's throw from the office he now occupies in St Albans. After qualifying, he soon moved on from his training authority, Harpenden, to Watford, where he has spent the greatest part of his career. Although reluctant to leave his home town of St Albans at first, Peter quickly grew to like Watford and he remains full of enthusiasm for the place. "It has a real mix of people," he explains. "Watford has the highest ethnic population in the county - 11 per cent - and everyone mixes. It's a great place to be.
"In many ways it's like a London borough in miniature - it is urban and has all the problems of an inner London borough, but there is probably more chance of bringing them to conclusion, and you certainly tried to do that."

He graduated to senior and then principal EHO over the next few years. But while he was making his way up the career ladder, Peter was also scaling different heights - on the basketball court. Having learned to referee to help his team to a place in the county league, he rose through the ranks to find himself officiating at international games - having been highly recommended by the English Federation. With all this extra-curricular activity, Peter decided to stick at principal, but circumstances forced a change of plan when his assistant director became terminally ill. He began a period of acting up to fill the role and sport was gradually forced into the background.

With his energy firmly focused on his career, the next step came when the department's director left and Peter went for the role. He spent two years settling into it before he found himself taking on a second round of acting-up, this time to fill the gap left by the departure of the director of personnel. It was a tough job to take on, as by that point in the early 1980s the onus was on cutting costs - and staff.
"It was a particularly hard time," he remembers.
But, undaunted, Peter threw himself into policy work beyond his immediate job - working with the HSE's local authority unit, Hela, and with Euro Hela on occupational health and safety at work and cross border co-operation. He hadn't anticipated a warm reception from the HSE as he'd publicly knocked them for failing to offer training courses to local authorities. "I suppose they thought the best idea was to bring me into the fold after that, so I became a member of Hela," he smiles.
He remained an active member of Hela for eight years, championing workers' rights and ensuring that both Watford, and the CIEH, had a strong voice in health and safety matters.
In the late 1980s, reorganisation took hold of Watford once again, producing three "super directorates".
"I became acting director for the environment, which included planning, trading standards, engineers and building control," explains Peter. "It was probably the worst spot of my career. We had staffing problems because of CCT and the department was so big, it really took over my life."

At the end of four years a new chief executive altered the structure again to form four corporate directorates and then a raft of heads of service.
"I didn't apply for a director's role because it wasn't my scene," explains Peter, "I insisted that my service should be called public health and I became head of that."
He hadn't lost his impetus either, forming in about 1991 what was to be the first environment unit in the country - just as green issues were starting to impinge on the public's consciousness.
"Part of the reason for this was that councillors had begun to ask more and more questions about the environment and I wanted to be able to answer them with knowledge," he explains. The council sent him to Watford's twin town of Mainz in Germany to see how they were tackling green issues, as they were so far ahead of the UK on environmental protection.
The unit did everything which could possibly merit the title green - Local Agenda 21, recycling, energy efficiency. He enjoyed this period greatly and, hearing him speak, it seems his enthusiasm only began to fade as environmental health was squeezed out by other buzzword agendas.
"It was a really good department with a great reputation, but we kept losing staff to community justice, or other new ideas. I felt that something could go wrong and I didn't want to be there to watch it, so I left on good terms last year."

And so we come back to this last hectic year. Peter had been heavily involved with the CIEH for years, serving as a general councillor on the health and safety committee for the past six. He is now chairman of the committe, with some radical views and no fear of speaking his mind.
"I think the pendulum has swung too far towards business," he says. "I came into the job to protect workers and the public, not business - they're big enough to protect themselves, and none of my family's personal experiences have changed my mind on that."
His strong views are by no means confined to health and safety. His appointment to the CIEH on a six-month contract to push the Chartered Institute's agenda on the Food Standards Agency ensured exposure to food safety policy at the highest level.
Peter's task was to support the amendments put forward by CIEH at the committee stage of the Bill, and to liaise with senior civil servants to ensure the CIEH viewpoint was appreciated and understood.
"I'd done similar work in liaising with Hela, so I had a reputation of working transparently - of being very honest and straightforward, though not particularly academic."
Peter spent his time making contacts with those who would make up the agency when it started up this April.

As a result of the successful passage of the Bill, and the undertaking given by Government to address the CIEH's concerns, Peter's job was complete after just four months.
At that time, the post of public health partnership manager came up at West Herts health authority. Ever a keen supporter of joined-up thinking and working, Peter decided he would offer his local authority experience and go for the job. They welcomed him with open arms.
With increasing pressure on local and health authorities to co-operate for the good of the public, Peter's appointment is a genuine - though disappointingly rare - step towards greater cohesion and understanding. It is a step he had often called for while he was still in local government.
"It gives me the chance to inform and assist the public health agenda of the health authority from within - to make new partners and assist existing ones throughout all sectors," he explains. "I'm very grateful to the authority's director of public health, Barry Tennison, for being innovative and far-sighted in creating the post."

And what is it actually like, working on the other side? He smiles. "Excellent. But it's shown me that health authorities haven't got the faintest idea about local authorities and vice versa. I'm going through terminology and explaining the local authority system to staff here - they're all astounded that there's no hierarchy between county and district councils."
The first part of this year was taken up entirely by plans for the Health Improvement Programme.
"My role was to ensure that local authorities were informed and had the chance to participate," he says. "I also pulled in new partnerships - including the local water company and the Environment Agency - which had just seconded someone for two years to look at health stewardship, so it was a perfect opportunity for both sides and it is being used as a pilot partnership."
Beyond this, his work takes in community safety and the wider health agenda, liaising with chief EHOs. "It's very important that EHOs really think about wider determinants of health - and see the health implication of housing, environment and working conditions as well as illness," he stresses.

In addition to the initial outline, Peter has also taken on housing and homelessness issues, as he knows he probably has more experience than others in the authority.
He is enjoying his new surroundings. "It's a very open way of working - and an open plan office. I'm quite willing to help on any local authority issue and others are happy to come to me to ask." This is also a testament to his approachability - and particularly the look of interest that seems to meet any request.
He's still making waves. "I think I'm the first person to say get out and talk to people! They've done Mori polls before, but that's not the same as going out and talking to local people. At the moment hospitals are a hot topic because two may have to close - they need to get out and tell people why."
He is modest about his success though. "I've enjoyed my career, but I've got places not because I've strained, but because I've been in the right place at the right time," he says earnestly.
He is still fighting fit too, despite a difficult couple of years recently when he was diagnosed as diabetic. He is still involved in sport, keenly following basketball and also a keen supporter of Watford and of Graham Taylor, who he met through the team's community activities in Watford - particularly the kick racial discrimination out of football campaign.

And the future? "I can't just sit back," he says cheerfully. "Although I came here with no ambition other than to make a good job of it, that might change. I know my wife thinks about retiring to Dorset and gardening, but I think she wonders how I'd cope with that too."
He sums up his attitude best when asked which sports he's still playing. "I play badminton and tennis but I have shoulder problems," he says. "My wife says don't hit so hard, slow it down - but you just can't do that can you?"