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The provision of sufficient accommodation in respect of water-closets,
the washing of clothes, and the storage, preparation and cooking of
food ; and, where necessary, separate accommodation as aforesaid for
every dwelling in the house.
The repair and lighting of staircases and the provision of hand-rails
where necessary.
Stability, and the prevention of and safety from fires.
Periodical cleansing and redecoration.
The paving of yards.
The lighting of rooms.
In their present proposed form the bye-laws appear to apply to all workingclass
tenement houses without any restrictions, and one of the principal
objects of the new house-to-house inspection should be to secure that such
houses—and they comprise the majority of the houses in the borough—
should, so far as practicable, be brought into compliance with the bye-laws.
It is, therefore, most desirable that the bye-laws in their final form should be
in operation when the work is begun. Another important matter that should
be dealt with in the course of the inspection is the compiling of the list of
those houses which call for a fairly frequent periodical inspection.
In addition to the utilization of the powers which will be conferred by the
bye-laws, the proposed inspection will enable a list to be prepared of houses
and underground rooms which can be regarded as unfit for human habitation
within the meaning of Sec. 17 of the 1909 Housing Act. It will also
call for the enforcement of work under Sec. 28 of the 1919 Act, in respect of
various defects which cannot be dealt with under the Public Health (London)
Act and other existing powers. A feature of this section is that, in default
of the necessary work being executed after the service of notice, the Council
would have to undertake it themselves and recover the cost from the owners.
The task is one of considerable magnitude. There were in the borough, at
the time of the 1911 census, 23,345 dwelling houses, and the figure is
approximately the same to-day. In this enumeration an ordinary tenement
house which is occupied by more than one family is counted as one house only.
I estimate that some twenty thousand are to be classed as working-class
houses, and most of these are tenement houses. To complete a routine inspection
of all of these, including the service of notices and the seeing through of
the consequent repairs and alterations, within a limited period such as (say)
one year, would need a very large special staff of inspectors and clerks, and
would, moreover, doubtless be impracticable on economic grounds. With our
present staff of 11 district sanitary inspectors, who would, of course, have to
continue their present duties also, the work could never be done at all, and it
will certainly necessitate the employment of a considerable additional staff of
inspectors and clerks even if it is extended over a period of a few years.
There are difficulties in connection with the proposed work which must
not be overlooked. The position in regard to the condition of the houses,is
so serious, however, that I do not consider that they should lead the Council
to abstain from action in this direction. They fall into three groups, as
follows:—