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case did the Council have to take legal action; the rest of the cases were
remedied by a re-arrangement of the people in their rooms.
I hope that by the time the new bye-laws for tenement houses are
approved, the housing problem will have so diminished as to render it
possible to call for the abatement of all the cases of overcrowding,
which will inevitably be found whenever a house-to-house inspection is
undertaken.
III.—Fitness of Houses.
(1) (a) General standard of housing in the district.—Hampstead is a
high-class residential district, but in it there are a few very old wornout
houses and many premises that need extensive repairs and constant
supervision.
(b) General character of the defects found to exist in unfit houses.—
The chief defects are of two classes:—(i) Crowded premises with
insufficient light and air that can only be effectively dealt with by
demolition and re-construction and (ii) dilapidated and worn-out
premises.
(c) How far dejects are due to the lack of proper management and
supervision by owners. —There is in some houses lack of proper management
and supervision by owners, and this is more evident when the
owner does not live in the district.
(2) General action taken as regards unfit houses under (a) the Public
Health (London) Act, 1891 (b) the Housing Acts.
(NOTE.—The detailed statistics as to action under these Acts will be given
in the appendices).
The procedure adopted is as follows:—After an inspection has been
made by the Housing Inspector, a schedule of defects is prepared
and submitted to the owner of the premises so that negotiations may bo
made concerning the best means of remedying the insanitary conditions.
Reasonable compromises have been effected, and as the information that
follows shows much good work has been done.
A few owners refused to carry out the necessary alterations, etc., in
this quasi-voluntary manner and these have been reported to the Public
Health Committee who ordered that Statutory Notices under the Public
Health Act should be served upon the recalcitrant owners. The Council
has served no Statutory Schedules under Section 28 of the Housing Act,
1919.
315 premises have been dealt with bv this means in 1921.
117 have been restored to a proper condition of repair at an
estimated cost of £6,372.