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116
All the increases of staff referred to above received the sanction
of the Ministry of Health in 1920, and will become effective during
the current year.
The problem of finding proper office accommodation for this
large staff is one with which the Council will have to deal. In the
Clerical department seven of the Clerks are crowded together in one
room which affords barely sufficient space to accommodate their
chairs and desks, while the eighth has to do his work at a
small table in the corner of the Sanitary Inspectors' room.
The Sanitary Inspectors' room is rather of the nature of a
large cubicle, since it is one portion of a very large room
which has been partitioned off into a number of compartments,
that allotted to the Inspectors being completely shut off from
the external walls so that it is deficient in means of ventilation,
and in the supply of sunlight, and artificial light is necessary
even during the day-time; moreover, it has been overcrowded by
fourteen Inspectors and cannot accommodate more. The two female
Inspectors, Factory and Workshops Inspector, and Inspector of
Outworkers and their premises, occupy a small room at the back of
the building. The Health Visitors, who formerly used the "Members'
room " in the mornings, now have to use one of the Committee rooms,
which is sometimes partially in use for other purposes at the same
time as it is in use by the Visitors. The Tuberculosis Health
Visitors have to use a small room intended for use as a waiting-room.
If good, steady work is to be really well done it is essential that the
workers should be well housed, and should have an ample supply of
fresh air and daylight; a stuffy atmosphere and constant use of
artificial light during the hours of daylight should not be tolerated,
especially by a Public Health Authority; such conditions as those
which exist in the Inspectors' room would not be permitted in a
factory or workshop, and would be condemned promptly in any
elementary school. Moreover, it is not conducive to good work, and
concentration of mind on work, that too many people should occupy