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80
Lettings Progress.—Through the courtesy of Mr. F. H. Dore,
the Housing Manager, the following extracts are quoted from his
survey on the 'lettings progress' during the year:—
"1. The Housing Register.—This year the necessity for annual
renewals of applications came into operation for the first time.
When an applicant registers his application he is given an acknowledgement
card on which attention is drawn to the necessity for the
annual renewal of his application. After a year has expired the
practice is to send a reminder to an applicant who has not renewed
his application and he is informed that if no reply is received within
seven days it will be assumed that he no longer requires accommodation
and that his name will accordingly be deleted from the
Housing Register. The purpose of this requirement is to see that as
far as possible the Housing Register is realistic. No fewer than 869
applications were cancelled during the year and, whereas the net
Housing Register on the 1st January was 3,880, at the end of the
year it had been reduced to 3,532. It seems fairly evident that in
quite a number of cases applicants have not renewed their registrations
when they have realised how low their points awards are, but
this cannot fully explain the heavy volume of cancellations and no
doubt a considerable number of applicants are being rehoused by
other Authorities. It will be interesting to see to what extent the
fall in the net figure of the Housing Register continues during 1951.
"2. The Points Scheme.—During the year one further amendment
was made in the method of operating the Points Scheme. It was
found that there was a number of applications which had been
registered for some years and which attracted not quite sufficient
points for their consideration by the Committee. Since so many
more recently registered applications were coming along with higher
points it was obvious that these cases stood very little chance of
receiving any attention, notwithstanding the fact that the families
concerned were living under rather difficult conditions. To deal
with this situation the Committee decided that 50% of available
lettings should be allocated to the longest registered applicants,
dealing first of all with those who were registered before 1945, then
those registered in 1946 and so on, down to a points level to be
determined from time to timo. In practice this level is about 5
points below the level with which the Committee would otherwise
be dealing. This decision should go a long way towards meeting the
criticism from the longest registered applicants.
"3. Lettings.—At the beginning of the year the balance of the flats
at Mascalls Court became available for letting. Later on the Tuskar
Street flats (Bolton House and Miles House) were handed over and