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5
To the Right Worshipful the Mayor, Aldermen
and Councillors of the City of Westminster.
My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit my report on the public health and sanitary conditions
of the City for the year 1948. The Ministry of Health in Circular 3/49
issued on 17th January, 1949, indicated the lines on which this report
should be prepared, namely, on those similar to the report for 1947.
The Ministry appreciates that for authorities such as the City of
Westminster certain aspects of the report will relate only to the first half
of the year for on 5th July, 1948, Maternity and Child Welfare, Day
Nurseries, Home Help Service, Vaccination and Immunisation, Tuberculosis
Dispensary service, were by the provisions of the National Health
Service Act of 1946 transferred from the control of the City Council to
that of the London County Council and to the Regional Hospital Board.
In many areas of the country, County Councils, designated Local Health
Authorities under the Act, while preserving their new rights and powers
have left the Maternity and Child Welfare, &c., duties, to a considerable
extent in the hands of those who administered these prior to the new
Act. This procedure has not been followed in London, where a new
ad hoc divisional administrative machine has been set up in each of nine
areas into which the county has been divided, the London County Council
being in direct control of staff and premises.
It will be appreciated that to submit an account of services which
remained under the City Council only for the first half of the year is not
very satisfactory and not a little confusing. The writer has to keep
adjusting his mind and his pen between past and present tenses; while
reporting vital statistics such as Infant Mortality rates for the whole year
he can only report on services and measures to combat infant mortality
for the first half of the year. So it is necessarily half the story.
There is good reason to believe that the London County Council and
its officers appreciate the high standard of the services which the City
Council has had to hand over, and this applies likewise to the Regional
Hospital Board. An experienced and efficient staff with unrivalled knowledge
and understanding of the area and its inhabitants, premises specially
built and equipped for the purpose of these services and in a state of
fresh decoration and repair were first rate assets. The City Council
always welcomed distinguished visitors and others specially interested
in Maternity and Child Welfare from home and overseas to its newest
Welfare Centre and Day Nursery at Bessborough Street and it is gratifying
that the County Council is continuing this tradition as this building by
its design and planning merits study as an example of the enterprise of a
progressive municipality.