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of the Act in 1895, by Section 41 (2) the open space to be provided to the
building may be entirely covered in up to a level of sixteen feet above the
adjoining pavement, or in other words, no open space need be provided to
the lowest floors, namely, the basement and ground floor, and possibly also an
entresol of the house. Furthermore there is no requirement to provide any
open space to public buildings, including schools, colleges, places of instruction,
hospitals, workhouses, theatres, halls, public rooms, libraries, hotels, lodginghouses,
homes, refuges, shelters, of greater capacity than 250,000 cubic feet,
or to buildings of the warehouse class, including factories and workshops of
greater capacity then 150,000 cubic feet, nor in any buildings constructed to
be principally used as offices although dwelling-houses.
The open space required about buildings built as or adapted for artisans'
dwellings is specially provided for in the Building Act, but this will not
benefit those who live in ordinary domestic buildings, whether as householders,
or sub-tenants, or lodgers occupying one or more rooms, and who are a large
majority of the population.
In consequence of this continuously retrogressive legislation old houses
possessing yards, areas, or open spaces in some form, at the front or back, or
both, are being rebuilt in such a manner as to entirely cover the whole
ground area two or three stories up, leaving not a particle of open space, not
even a shaft for the purpose of allowing the drainage to discharge in the open,
so that the health conditions of domestic buildings in London will rapidly
become worse, and the bye-laws, regulations and directions of the County
Council and the Sanitary Authorities, which are all devised so as to cause
drainage to be excluded from or to be placed outside of, domestic buildings,
are rendered useless by a Building Act which enables a domestic building to
embrace the whole of the drainage of the premises within its external walls.
The matter wears an even more serious aspect when considered on a wider
basis. The words "open space," originally bore the common meaning of
ground space, to most persons they still bear that common-sense meaning, and
Parliament has attached that meaning to the words in the Open Spaces Acts,
but in the later Buildings Acts the provision of open space has successively
been lifted from the basement to the ground floor, thence over the first floor
to sixteen feet above the ground level, and in due time may be made by future
Acts of Parliament to ascend higher, so that eventually a house may be held
to have supplied the necessary open space on the roof top instead of at ground
level.
I beg to submit that it is only by tracing the result to its logical conclusion,
that the past, present and prospective perversion in the Buildings
Acts of the meaning of open space can be fully understood, and the seriousness
of the position realised.
I have the honour to be, Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
JOHN F. J. SYKES.
Medical Officer of Health.
Printed by Order of the Health Committee,
WILLIAM MALLISON,
Chief Clerk.