View report page

99
of Housing and Local Government exercised powers granted to
him under the Requisitioned Houses Act, 1960, and made an Order
extending requisitioning powers in Greenwich for a limited period
to enable the Council to complete the task. This Order expired
at the end of September by which time no properties remained
under requisition. Altogether some 543 houses and flats had been
purchased and another 65 were retained on short leases of up to
10 years. A total of 969 dwellings had been handed back to owners
since the 1955 Act came into force.
"The termination of requisitioning was however by no means
the end of the problem. Practically all of the acquired properties
were in need of improvement and in the majority of cases works
of conversion into self-contained flats were necessary. In order
to qualify for financial assistance from the Exchequer these works
were to be carried out by March 1961. In the majority of cases
vacant possession of houses had to be obtained so that builders
could get to work on them; consequently a large number of families
had to be transferred out of these premises so that as much work
as possible could be put in hand. The Council's own technical and
building resources were used to the limit and much of the work
had to be put out to private architects and builders.
"The need to obtain vacant possession of properties for the
builders to commence work was a most pressing one, and the
Housing Committee found it necessary to insist that one offer, and
one offer only, of alternative accommodation could be made to
tenants. Practically all available lettings were devoted to this
operation and during the year a total of 269 families were transferred
from one Council property to another. In addition 32
tenants were transferred out of requisitioned premises during the
early part of the year so that the dwellings they were occupying
could be handed back to the owners.
"All this meant that rehousing from the Housing Register came
practically to a standstill. In my notes last year I remarked that
1959 was the leanest year since the war as far as the housing of
registered applicants was concerned, with only 21 cases being dealt
with. 1960 was even worse, only 7 families being housed. Happily
this state of affairs is not likely to continue into 1961 because during
that year we may expect the completed conversions to become
available for letting and, although a high proportion of these will
have to be used to accommodate families being moved from slum
clearance areas and from sites to be cleared for redevelopment,
undoubtedly much more progress will be made in dealing with
waiting list cases.