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45
Estimate of Total Rehousing Accommodation Required in Kensington.
As mentioned earlier, representatives of the borough council conferred with representatives of
the county council during the year on the question of extending the council's five years programme ;
and subsequently the public health committee embarked upon a campaign for dealing with a
number of small clearance areas, which at present give accommodation for 1,163 persons. This
work will be spread over several years, and it is estimated that 250 dwellings will be required to
rehouse the people to be displaced. The committee have also commenced the task of closing
unsatisfactory basements in North Kensington, which are estimated to give accommodation at the
present time for 6,000 persons.
These clearance areas and basements contain a number of overcrowded families, and when
they have been dealt with, not only will unsatisfactory dwellings have been demolished or closed,
but a certain amount of overcrowding revealed at the survey will have been abated. There will
remain, however, overcrowding in other houses in the borough, and it has been estimated that in
order to remedy all overcrowding and to rehouse the families in the clearance areas and unsatisfactory
basements approximately 2,000 new dwellings will be required. It will be difficult to provide all
this new accommodation within the borough, which is already almost completely built up ; and,
whilst the borough council and the Kensington housing associations are providing a considerable
number of houses, it will be necessary to look to the London county council to provide a large
amount of accommodation outside the borough.
The Problem of Large Families with Small Incomes.
There are in the borough many families with a large number of small children where, owing to
a low wage-earning capacity, the fathers are unable to pay the rent required for an adequate number
of rooms.
Private owners do not generally care to take such families, and many are so poor and so large
that even housing associations hesitate to cater for them.
The council have recently given this problem very careful consideration. In North Kensington
there are several thousand large tenement houses with good-sized rooms which were intended
originally for one family but are now let off in lodgings to two, three, four, five or more families of
the working classes. A number of these houses in the poorer districts are gradually approaching
the time (ten of fifteen years hence) when they will be ripe for clearance area procedure. The
council have decided to acquire voluntarily or by compulsory purchase such of these houses as are
necessary and use them for accommodating the very large families which are proving a difficulty
in connection with local housing reform. A sum of £10,000 has been included in the estimates for
the current year for this purpose. During the course of ten years or so the large families will
diminish to manageable dimensions, owing to the children growing up and marrying, and by that
time the property may be ready for clearance.
Such a measure is thought to be more advantageous to the council than the erection of blocks
of new flats for large families. To provide satisfactory accommodation for these families, the flats
would have to be larger, and consequently more expensive, than those hitherto built. The era of
large families is rapidly disappearing, and neither the council nor private enterprise can be expected
to build at considerable cost new blocks of six- or seven-roomed flats to meet what is probably
only a temporary difficulty.
FOOD SUPPLY.
Milk and Dairies (Consolidation) Act, 1915.—The council have decided that a number of samples
of milk shall be taken each year for the purpose of examination for the presence of tubercle bacilli.
In the year 1935, twenty-five samples were so taken and one only of these was found to contain
tubercle bacilli. The result in this case was communicated to the medical officer of health of the
county in which the milk was produced. At a subsequent inspection of the cows at the farm
concerned it was found that one cow was suffering from tuberculosis of the udder. This animal
was slaughtered under the provisions of the Tuberculosis Order.
Composition of Milk Samples.—Of 305 formal samples of milk taken under the Food and Drugs
(Adulteration) Act in 1935, eight were certified by the public analyst as adulterated. Four of
these contained less than 8'5 per cent, of non-fatty solids, one less than 3 per cent, of fat, whilst
the remaining three samples were reported as adulterated owing to the presence in the milk of
formaldehyde. These particulars, do not give any indication of the general quality of the milk