Comments and Evidence Files 1956-1977

These files relate to responses generated by the Society from the mid-1950s up to Sep 1974, before its re-organisation and the establishment of Specialist Committees of Council.

File contents: The files were maintained by the Society Secretary and contain some or all of the following: correspondence with government, organisations, and Society members, Groups, Branches and committees; various official documents, reports and memoranda sent to the Society; submissions from Groups, and to a lesser extent, Branches; and the Society's draft and final responses.

The Environmental Health Committee: Between 1958 and 1974 a large number of the Society's official responses were produced by the Environmental Health Committee, a standing committee of Council. No original minutes or meeting papers of this committee have survived, although some reports of its activities can be found in the Council minutes. It appears that the EHC met irregularly and by 1970 hardly at all, leaving the Society Secretary to gather comments and evidence by correspondence either with the Chairman or individual members in their own capacity. It has not been possible to verify all the files in this section which contain responses produced by the EHC, as this is not always expressly stated in the papers. Where it is certain, from evidence within the file, this is indicated in square brackets at the end of the description. However, it may be assumed that a number of other responses on environmental health issues were prepared by the EHC, or at least by the chairman or a member.

It is probable that some evidence produced by other Society committees or working parties has not been identified as such in the list below. This is unavoidable and due solely to lack of evidence within the files.

1956-1977

9 boxes

Deposited at CMAC in subject-labelled boxes. Some of the 'subjects' were based on the names of the Specialist Committees of Council which took over the responsibilities of the General Purposes Committee and the functions of the dissolved Groups in Oct 1974 (see D.3). Other boxes were labelled with a variety of topics such as 'Nursing', 'Disability' and 'NHS reorganisation' and the remainder each contained files on lots of different subjects. Since none of the comments and evidence were actually generated by the Specialist Committees and the other subject classifications seemed, to an extent, subjective and inconsistent, all the files have been re-arranged into strict chronological order.