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and they directed the Council to pay the costs of the inquiry,
amounting to about £6; but the Board did not make any order, as
they were entitled to do under the Act, as to the costs of the
appellant.
The grounds on which I considered the closing orders should
be made were the generally dilapidated condition of the premises,
and also the dark and ill-ventilated condition of the basements.
By the time of the hearing of the appeal all the work, apart from
the basements, had been carried out. The interval between the
making of the order and the hearing of the appeal under this Act
compared with the possibility of almost immediate action under the
Public Health (London) Act, 1891, constitute a very great advantage
in proceding under the latter statute. Had we proceeded under this
the summons would probably have been beard when the work had not
been done, or at all events only in progress, instead of, as in the
present case, after it was finished. It seems to me impossible for
an Inspector to judge of what the condition of things was when
everything has been put to rights and made to look fairly spick and
span, whereas had a visit been made by the magistrate, it would
have been when the condition was at its worst.
In January, 1911, I prepared a list of certain houses, set out on
the table below, which I thought should be inspected under the
Housing and Town Planning Act. The Committee considered the
list of such importance that it was referred by them to a small
Sub-Committee who issued instructions to the Inspectors concerned
to make an inspection with regard to the conditions set out in
Article 2 of the Board's order. This was accordingly done and the
reports were subsequently considered by the Main Committee. It
was recognised that while defects of all the other properties could
be remedied in great part under the Public Health Act, in Levant
Street and Lower Park Road we had a block of 16 houses
practically back-to-back, and that short of a re-arrangement little
could be done. A Sub-Committee paid a visit to the property and
recommended the matter to be adjourned, in the first place, for a
conference with the owners as to their willingness to do anything,
and in the second, to consider whether in the event of a closing
order being made this would be upheld in the event of an appeal.
Up to the present, in order to increase the air movement in the basements,
shafts have been erected with some amount of good effect,
but the evils of the absence of thorough ventilation still remain.
The fact that the inhabitants usually keep their front doors open
may explain the fact of our rarely getting any extra amount of
sickness in this little area.
In tabular form is set out the results of the working of this Act.
Number of houses inspected under Section 17 30
Number of houses in respect of which closing orders
were made Nil
Number of houses where defects (such as could be
remedied under the Public Health Act) were
remedied 14