Healthy Spaces

The goal of environmental health care is to prevent, reduce and eliminate factors that can cause health hazards to people using spaces and customers of services. Environmental health care systematically supervises the following spaces and services among other things: 

• Daycare centres and places for organising activities related to the gathering of children and young people

• Schools and educational institutions 

• Places where a social welfare operating unit provides continuous care

• Spaces intended for accommodation

• Exercise spaces such as gyms

• Skin-breaking activities (e.g. a tattoo studio) and beauty salons that requires special hygiene

• Solariums 

• Public saunas 

• Beaches, winter swimming places, swimming pools and spas 

• Facilities supplying drinking water, other intake and use of drinking water

These operations must file a notification as degreed by the Health Protection Act.

On top of supervision, we offer guidance and advice to operators. We participate in the operations of indoor air taskforces of schools and daycare centres among other things. 

Supervision annual charge

Objects of legislative supervision are charged an annual payment. The annual payment is 150 €. The payment is charged from the objects of supervision that were in the Environmental Office’s registry on the first day of the year. 

The annual charge is collected from operations that have been approved or registered to municipality’s health protection authorities. A specific list of operations that are charged are listed as an attachment on the Health Protection Act (terveydensuojelulaki, Finlex) (in Finnish). If the same operator is managing multiple operations that require notification in the same premises, just one annual charge is collected from them. For operations taking place in multiple different premises are charged per premises.  

Further information about annual charges is found on Valvira's website (in Finnish).