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46
Dore, the Housing Manager, the following extracts are quoted from
his survey on the 'lettings progress' during the year.
"A report on the work of revising the Housing Register was submitted
to the Committee on the 21st January, 1949. On the new
Register at the beginning of the year, there were shown 3,155 housing
applicants. A number of late re-registrations continued to be received
however, until towards the end of February, and a more realistic
figure for the size of the Register as at the 1st January would be in
the neighbourhood of 3,250. The year has afforded ample opportunity
of testing the practical working of the Scheme, and the following
observations are submitted:—
Experience in Working the Scheme.—On the whole, the Points
Scheme has proved to be a satisfactory and equitable system of
classifying needs. Nevertheless, it will be appreciated that no
Points Scheme has yet been devised which could, of course, take
into account every possible factor arising out of the housing hardship,
and, therefore, anomalies are bound to arise. It can, however, be
confidently stated that the present Scheme is operating very fairly
indeed to the overwhelming majority of applicants, and it is interesting
to note that the Scheme operated by this Council follows very
closely the recommendations of the Housing Management SubCommittee
of the Central Housing Advisory Committee, whose
Report was issued by the Ministry of Health during the year. The
main point of difference is in respect of the "residential qualification"
which the Report recommended should be a balancing factor, whereas
in your Scheme "basic" points are awarded for this particular
qualification. There can be no doubt that the policy of giving
maximum publicity to the working of the Scheme has fully justified
itself and although it cannot be said that the amount of correspondence
and the number of callers have reduced during the year, it is
possible to discuss an applicant's housing prospects much more
satisfactorily when the basis of the working of the Scheme is made
fully known.
In April it became apparent to the Committee that a number of
newly registered applications were attracting high points and there
was the difficulty that, because of this, an applicant might be rehoused
in a matter of a few weeks or months after registration,
whilst many hundreds of others had been waiting for years. To
prevent this the Committee resolved that, except in special circumstances,
no application should be considered until it has been
registered for at least twelve months.
One important aspect in which the Points Scheme has not
proved effective is in the matter of assessing the needs of elderly
persons. Their problems are so different from other applicants that