Health, Wellbeing and Local Government Committee

Report - Inquiry into the Use and Regulation of Sunbeds - November 2009 (PDF, 969KB)

Welsh government response

Written Consultation Responses

Announcement of Committee Inquiry: The use and regulation of Sunbeds in Wales

The Health, Wellbeing and Local Government Committee has agreed to undertake an inquiry into the use and regulation of sunbeds in Wales and is calling for those with an interest or expertise in this area to submit written evidence.

Background

The potential health risks associated with the use of sunbeds and especially the use of unsupervised tanning salons by children are issues that have been raised in the UK over the past few years.

The Health, Wellbeing and Local Government Committee have therefore agreed to examine the use and regulation of sunbeds in Wales.

Terms of Reference

The Committee has agreed the following terms of reference for its inquiry:

"To examine the health implications of the use of sun beds, the regulation of sun bed facilities and the National Assembly for Wales' competence to legislate to introduce regulation".

Among the issues the Committee will be considering are:

• The use of sunbeds by children

• The over use of sunbeds

• The supervision of sunbed users

• The use of coin-operated machines

• The monitoring and limiting of sunbed sessions

• The provision of health risk information at sunbed premises

• The inspection of premises

Submissions do not need to address all the above areas and the Committee welcomes written evidence from both individuals and organisations, including those with direct experience of using sunbeds. We will also be holding oral evidence sessions.

Interested parties are invited to submit written evidence to the Clerk of the Committee at the address below, to arrive no later than Friday 21 August 2009. If possible, please supply an electronic version in MS Word or Rich Text format, either by e mail to health.wellbeing.localgovt.comm@wales.gsi.gov.uk or on a disk. Further guidance on the submission of evidence is attached. I would be grateful if you could share this request with other interested parties or, where appropriate, any of your member organisations.

The Committee may call on those who have submitted written evidence to supplement it in oral evidence to the Committee.  Please indicate in your response whether you would be prepared to give evidence in person.

Witnesses should be aware that once written evidence has been submitted to the Committee it is treated as the property of the Committee. It is the Committee’s intention to place written papers on its website, and they may subsequently be printed with the report.  

It is normal practice for the National Assembly to publish evidence provided to a committee. Consequently your response may appear in a report or in supplementary evidence to a report. The National Assembly will not publish information which it considers to be personal data.

In the event of a request for information submitted under UK legislation, it may be necessary to disclose the information that you provide. This may include information which has previously been removed by the National Assembly for publication purposes.

If you are providing any information, other than personal data, which you feel is not suitable for public disclosure, it is up to you to stipulate which parts should not be published, and to provide a reasoned argument to support this. The National Assembly will take this into account when publishing information or responding to requests for information.

June 2009