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107
Such a room is unfit for habitation if either the average height
from floor to ceiling is not at least seven feet, or the room does not
comply with the Regulations made by the Borough Council on the 4th
May, 1911, and consented to by the then Local Government Board. The
Regulations secure the proper ventilation and lighting and the protection
of the rooms against dampness, effluvia or exhalation.
The definition contained in the Public Health (London) Act, 1936,
Section 132 (4), is material to all proceedings taken by the Public
Health Committee and is as follows:—
"The expression underground room includes every room of a house
being a room the surface of the floor of which is in any part
thereof more than 3 ft. 'below the level of the surface of the
footway of the street adjoining the room, or of the surface
of the ground adjoining or nearest to the room."
The use of such underground rooms is prohibited by the Public
Health (London) Act, 1936, except on conditions which are very much
the same as those prescribed by and under the Section 12 (2) of the
Housing Act, 1936, but procedings can only be taken where the underground
room or rooms are let or separately occupied as a dwelling.
The number of rooms dealt with under its provisions has therefore
been relatively small, and restricted to cases where the rooms can be
made to comply with the Acts and occupation is confined to one floor.
There is nothing revolutionary in the definitions above-mentioned,
for as long ago, at least, as 1855, Section 103 of the Metropolis Management
Act, 1855, gave a definition of an underground room as a room
three feet below the footway of the adjoining street, and made provisions
for prohibiting the occupation of such rooms as separate dwellings
without the provision of areas, means of lighting, ventilation, drainage
and minimum height.
These conditions again were much the same as those applied under
the regulations and enactments mentioned above. They were re-enacted
and made more stringent in Section 96 of the Public Health (London)
Act, 1891, which is now replaced by the Section 132 of the Public
Health (London) Act, 1936, mentioned above.
As regards the Housing Acts, the definition of an underground
room was contained in the Housing, Town Planning, &c., Act, 1909,
in somewhat the same form as at present, but the prohibition contained
therein related only to the use as a sleeping place. It was in 1935 that
the Housing Act of that year introduced the important change of prohibiting
the use of such rooms for human habitation, and not merely
for sleeping.