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a scheme has been agreed to which will meet the objections of both
Councils. This is the only house left in the City for women (single
women and married couples). It is now to have women only, and the
number of inmates to be reduced from 86 to 75.
Ham Yard Soup Kitchen and Hospice is under consideration of the
Courts as to its being a common lodging-house. It has two dormitories,
with ten beds in each. The police magistrate has decided in favour of
the County Council.
New by-laws have been sanctioned for the control of common
lodging-houses in the County of London. These are enforced by the
County Council.
Revenue Act, 1903.
In 1890 Parliament passed the Customs and Inland Revenue Act
(53 Vict., cap 8) in which (Sec. 26.2) they granted exemption from
inhabited house duty for houses used solely for providing separate
dwellings at rents not exceeding 7s. 6d. a week for each dwelling, if
there is a certificate of the Medical Officer of Health that the house is
so constructed as to afford suitable accommodation for each of the
families or persons inhabiting it, with due provision for their sanitary
requirements. The Medical Officer must examine such premises on
request, for the purpose of ascertaining whether such certificate can
properly be given, if the person making the request would be liable to
pay house duty were it not discharged by the production of the
certificate. This exemption was in order to encourage the erection of
artizans' dwellings on good lines. In 1891 Parliament extended the
benefits of the Act, and last year the provisions were again extended
and embodied in a new section (Revenue Act 1903, Sec. 11), the
previous enactments being repealed except in regard to the mode of
obtaining the certificate. The exact words of the section are:—
11. (1) Where a house, so far as it is used as a dwelling-house, is
used for the sole purpose of providing separate dwellings—
(a) The value of any dwelling in the house which is of an annual
value below twenty pounds shall be excluded from the annual
value of the house for the purposes of inhabited house duty;
and
(b) The rate of inhabited house duty in respect of any dwelling in
the house of an annual value of twenty pounds but not
exceeding forty pounds shall be reduced to three pence ; and
(c) The rate of inhabited house duty in respect of any dwelling in
the house of an annual value exceeding forty pounds but not
exceeding sixty pounds shall be reduced to sixpence.