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101
Survey of the Borough.
Consequent upon the request of the Ministry of Health for a
report concerning the steps being taken in connection with the housing
question and the dealing with insanitary property, an inspection was
made of certain parts of the Borough. The Ministry was supplied,
inter alia, with two lists of properties, one a list of areas which are
being, or may have to be, dealt with as unhealthy under Part I. or
Part II. of the Act of 1890, and the other a list of insanitary houses
(other than houses in unhealthy areas) which arc seriously defective
but which can be made habitable. The first list contained addresses of
259 dwellings with a population of 1,018, and the other, 643 dwellings
with a population of The action taken in respect of these
dwellings will be reported upon in the Annual Report for 1920, but I
have thought it well to append here the Special Report which I
prepared at the close of the year in relation to the two lists of
houses :—
Public Health Department,
Town Hall, Haverstoch Hill,
Hampstead, N.W. 5.
3rd January, 1920.
To the Chairman and Members
of the Housing Committee.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Repairing of Houses, Structural Alterations of
Existing Houses, or Acquisition of Existing Houses.
With reference to the above subject and to the list of houses which I have
submitted to this Committee, I desire to bring the matter forward for your consideration
in order that the policy of the Committee may be defined and the necessary
procedure for dealing with the question may be put upon a regular basis.
The Committee will remember that I have submitted two lists of houses; one,
that of those premises which cannot be made reasonably fit in all respects for human
habitation, and the other a list of houses which though below the standard compatible
with health yet can be made, either by ordinary cleansing and renovations or
by structional alterations, in all respects reasonably fit for human habitation. It is
to this latter that I wish to refer. This list, when presented to you, contained 643
premises, and will, I believe, be augmented as time goes on and further houses are
found to be in a condition which calls for action under section '28 of the Housing
Act, 1919.
The sections which particularly deal with this matter are sections 28, 26 and
12 of the Act of 1919, and later 1 wish to call your attention to section 36 of the Act
of 1909 and its application to this question.