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248
3. Where it is advisable to serve a notice upon the
holder or person or persons having a long interest
in the property, it being unfair in my opinion to
saddle a short leaseholder with the responsibilities
of practically rebuilding or reconstructing
premises.
4. When the Public Health Act is used the notices must
state specific defects, and when these are remedied
the notices are complied with, thus limiting, under
certain circumstances the works that are necessary
to put the premises into proper order and
condition ; some of such work not coming within
the nuisance clauses of the Public Health Act.
5. When the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, is used
a Closing Order in practice is difficult to enforce,
more especially when some of the nuisances
mentioned in the notices have been abated, as
shown by an actual case in Battersea mentioned in
this report.
In conclusion, I am firmly convinced that it would greatly
facilitate the object which the Council have so warmly at
heart, i.e., the proper housing of the Working Classes, if
they would adopt these powers under the Housing Act in such
special cases as may from time to time be brought by the
Medical Officer of Health to their notice. In this way the
work of the Public Health Department will be made easier,
whilst the intrinsic value of the powers conferred will exert
a powerful influence upon such owners as may prove recalcitrant
from any cause.
Systematic house-to-house inspections, which have been
so effectively carried out, especially for the past five years, in
the Borough (vide Annual Reports of the Medical Officer of
Health), are most desirable, with the object of levelling up
all houses to a fair and proper standard. Any individual
houses which may be found in the course of such house-tohouse
inspections to be sanitarily unfit, can be dealt with