If 2001 was seen as a year of transition for the CIEH, then 2002 promises to be a year of substantial change, not least with the popular election of Belfast-born Brian Hanna as its new president. Having retired as chief executive of Belfast City Council at the end of 2001, after almost 40 years in local government, his three-year stewardship looks set to propel the CIEH's refocused policy agenda to a wider audience. Interview by Tracey Khanna

Now widely associated with his commitment to the sustainable development agenda, Brian began his career with the Belfast Corporation in 1959 as a clerical officer. Six years later, he qualified as an environmental health officer and worked until 1973 on a wide range of environmental health duties within the Corporation's health department. A brief two year period with the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Industry followed, where he worked as a senior training advisor before returning to local government. Brian held a variety of senior environmental health posts between 1975 and 1994 until he was made chief executive and town clerk at Belfast in that year, a move which took him away from the day-to-day workings of environmental health. However, his longstanding membership of the Northern Ireland Centre and his work with the CIEH's Environmental Health Commission in the mid-1990s has kept his environmental health roots firmly planted. "The CIEH has made a lot of changes and there has been a lot of good progress made," he says. "Now that we have revived structures on policy, for example, it's important that we really try to up the ante and be influential within government and start to deliver on these issues."

Brian compares the Agendas for change report, which came out in 1997, with the 1960s West Ham and England footballer, Martin Peters, who was widely regarded as being ahead of his time. "I think that report was also ahead of its time in some respects," he reflects. "It was saying things about the importance of connecting the health agenda with the environmental and economic agenda." With regard to the CIEH's new administrative and policy structure, and its moves toward the introduction of chartered status, Brian notes that "all organisations are very good at producing strategies and policy. The devil is in the delivery." But what of the CIEH's ability to deliver? "No one professional body can deliver on these issues on their own," he says. "Everybody has got to work together in some structured way. We have to try and change the all too common situation where environmental health does not have a presence at the table." In response to the charge that some members consider chartered status to be a professional move in the wrong direction, because it will create an elitist structure, Brian disagrees. "I don't believe that that is the case," he says. "It's like all jobs, you have to have people at the policy and strategy level - the influencing end - but you also have to have people who deliver on the ground."

"To argue that it is not a good idea to be professional or to have 'street cred' in terms of your profession is a bad argument," he continues. "We have to have people who have got credibility at a higher level and have influence over government policy, local authority policy and maybe regional policy." This is a debate that has been raging in one form or another for years, he says. In the 1990s when Brian was on the general council, as it was then, there was substantial debate about whether the organisation should be an Institution of Environmental Health Officers or an Institute of Environmental Health. "I was always on the side of the latter," says Brian. "The facts are that nobody owns environmental health". He points out that while the CIEH was formed by people of a certain professional background, and will continue to be dominated by that group, there is room for welcoming other people into the organisation. "The general public are not interested in professional rivalry, they are interested in service delivery and getting things improved in their area," he declares. "You are not going to have influence in the corridors of power if you simply want to retain a small, narrow focus. What is it we want to be? It is very clear to me that the CIEH is about promoting environmental health." Now that the Chartered Institute has successfully emerged from a long, and sometimes painful, process of organisational, financial and strategic change, it could be argued that there is a role for the CIEH of the new millennium to be more than just a membership body. "A good EHO will not see his role in a local authority as simply to enforce the legislation," he says. "He will be working with colleagues in the health service and education department, for example, to promote improvements in health."

A member of the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development, a government-established body set up in 1995 to encourage debate on sustainable development issues, Brian serves today on its replacement body the Sustainable Development Commission. A number of the project areas that the Commission will be focussing on in the next two years - climate change, food and farming, and regeneration for example - are in line with the CIEH's work programme. "Food is not just an environmental health issue," he says. "The Government has recognised that the whole issue of farming and its connection with food and how rural development will progress is not about encouraging farmers to grow more food anymore." While Brian accepts that there is unlikely to be a huge change at the distribution end of the food industry, in terms of people buying food from supermarkets, he feels supermarkets themselves have a larger role to play in ensuring that the food they sell meets the highest possible standards. "We live in a consumer world," he continues. "The public are aware of these issues and will demand quality." But what of the organic niche market, which prices out the poorer members of society, who arguably are in most need of healthy, good quality, fresh food? "What we want is organic, quality food to be the norm," he retorts. However, he accepts that the popular "green" opinion that the food we eat is actually too cheap, is at odds with the CIEH's remit to protect the health of poorer communities. "We don't want a situation to arrive, which has unfortunately been the case for many years, where the poorest people have the worst diets." This is partly to do with income, he says, and partly to do with education and knowledge. "If you go to our farmers' market in Belfast," he points out, "it isn't the rich that are there. It's ordinary working class people that go there, because they can buy direct from the producer, cheaper." Clearly food, its connection to the rural community and future regeneration is a big issue for Brian, but there are other environmental problems that concern him. The UK's record on waste, recycling and reuse is disappointing, he says. "This is an area where we have singularly failed," he admits, when talking of local authorities and their waste activities. "Many of us are using the performance indicators at local level to try and monitor how we are doing, but the ones that are always the most disappointing are waste." It is widely accepted that local authorities are under-funded when it comes to dealing with waste, and he plainly views prevention and not cure as the only way forward. His devotion to public service is obvious, and in the New Year Honours List 2000, Brian was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his service to local government. More recently, in June 2001, Brian was awarded an honorary degree by Queen's University Belfast. Yet his retirement from local government will merely afford him more time to pursue his sustainability goals and become reconnected with the profession through his new role as the CIEH's mouthpiece. One dilemma that EHOs have always faced is how do you start to influence change which improves the quality of life for people? This is what sustainable development is all about, he says. "Ultimately, if you don't get planning right, from a sustainability point of view, then houses get built in the wrong place, people have to drive further to work because the public transport isn't there to take them and so on. So, unless we get in at the prevention end of these things then you are always at the clear-up end - whether it's to do with litter, fridges, coronary heart disease or whatever."

Brian readily accepts that personally, he has had more opportunities and has had exposure to a lot of "clear thinking", through his role on the Sustainable Development Commission and the level at which he has been working, than most EHOs experience. "There is a huge role for environmental health people within local government, and within industry, in influencing things as much as enforcing things." It's a great message, and one which the CIEH hopes to be able to take to a more influential level this year.