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There has been some change in the general pattern of the work during the
past few years. Immediately after the war and for several years following, the
defects in almost every house in the Borough were to some extent at least attributable
to war damage and there were restrictions as to the amount of repair work
which could be carried out.
Owners were in general willing and even anxious to have the work done and
they were influenced partly no doubt by the fact that in many cases the greater
amount of the cost was met by the War Damage Commission. At the present time the
majority of war damage claims have been settled and the full cost of repairs must
now be borne by the owner of the property. As a consequence additional items,
which are not or cannot be included in a sanitary notice but which add to the
comfort of the occupier or the appearance of the property and were previously
done together with the war damage, are now generally excluded. In particular,
owners now not infrequently refuse to carry out decorations. It was held in a
recent case that lack of decoration does not constitute a nuisance and cannot
therefore be included in a statutory notice. This decision has been upheld on
appeal and is consequently binding on magistrates in the future.
In spite of this, the standard of decoration and furnishing is higher than
ever before. Many tenants carry out their own decorations which are of a high
quality, and the quality of the furnishings and the care which is obviously
given to them is evidence of an increase in the pride which the people of the
Borough have in their homes. There are of course exceptions where there are bad
landlords or bad tenants or both, one not infrequently causing the other, and it
is these cases to which attention is most frequently drawn, but in general the
improvement is very good.
A summary of the work of the sanitary inspectors is given below in Table II.
The number of complaints received was approximately 4% less than in the previous
year but the number of cases in which legal proceedings were necessary was
increased. The general pattern is however much the same as in previous years.
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