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4
Section 9 of the Act and Counsel's opinion which has been obtained
is to the effect that a part of a house which is separately let can
be regarded as a house for the purposes of this Section. To this
extent the standards of fitness can be related to the method of
occupation of the house as well as to the house as a whole. There
are difficulties in the operation of Section 9 which are mentioned
in the part of the report dealing with housing.
Towards the end of the year the Noise Abatement Act, 1960,
received the Royal Assent. It is of interest to note that it amends
one of the provisions of the Public Health (London) Act, 1936, by
substituting "noise which is a nuisance" for the words ".... noise
which is injurious or dangerous to health". It may be taken that
the modern view is that something which is an annoyance sufficient
to interfere with ordinary good living conditions should be
controlled irrespective of its actual effect on health, or it may be
regarded as an appreciation of the fact that the words "injurious
or dangerous to health" which occur with surprising frequency in
other Acts of Parliament have very largely become a legal fiction.
Amendment of this phrase is long overdue not only because
statements to this effect are almost always incapable of proof but
because it should be made quite clear that conditions which interfere
with a persons comfort and sound living conditions ought to
be capable of correction long before they affect the persons health,
that in fact prevention is better than cure. The words "the working
classes" were deleted from the housing legislation because of the
unrealistic limitation they imposed. The words "injurious or
dangerous to health" might well be amended for the same reason.
The number of cases of the more serious infectious disease
has been low. Contacts of cases of diphtheria and smallpox
notified in other parts of London have caused a good deal of work
of investigation but have fortunately not developed into actual
cases of these diseases. Notifications of respiratory tuberculosis
have however remained high and the drop in the notification rate
for the country as a whole over the past 5 or 6 years is only now
becoming apparent in Hampstead.
A summary of the work of the Department under the various
headings is given in the Report which follows , but this does not
very adequately represent the amount of work done by the public
health inspectors on which the organisation of the Department is
based.