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13
Sanitary Circumstances of the Area
Sanitary Inspectors.
Total number of inspections 13,068
Total number of reinspections 34,272
Total number of intimation notices served 7,390
Total number of nuisance notices served 2,430
Women Sanitary Inspectors.
Total number of visits and inspections (factories,
workplaces, infectious disease, etc.) 2,455
Total number of revisits 256
Total number of intimation notices served 99
Workshops in which defects were found 141
The difficulties encountered by the owners of property were
eased to some extent by the relaxation on the 1st July of the need
to obtain building licences for works estimated to cost under £100
for each dwelling, replacing the previous limit of £2 a month for
each dwelling. Materials and labour have also generally been less
scarce, although certain things like zinc sheeting are still almost
unobtainable. The cost of repairs, however, is out of proportion to
the general rise in the cost-of-living, a pre-war £60-70 repair now
requiring an expenditure of £200 and more. The fact that rents
are controlled at pre-war prices is putting a severe, sometimes
intolerable, strain upon owners of property, particularly upon those
whose savings for old age have been invested in a few small houses
or cottages and who now find their meagre incomes after taxation
swallowed up by the excessive cost of repairs.
Many premises are still being patched and patched again which
are really beyond repair, owing to the great need to conserve
anything which does in any measure relieve the strained housing
position. New homes are rising slowly, and only 455 were erected
during the year, which go such a little way among the fourteen to
fifteen thousand applicants still waiting for homes of their own.
It is fortunate that there have been no severe weather strains cast
upon the old property, because much of it seems to be held together
by the mere fact of being occupied, and excessive stress might
well tip the scale in many instances.