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A Note on Housing and a Record of Action Taken in Relation
to Individual Unfit Buildings and Parts of Buildings—1930 to
1951.
If any proof were needed of the importance of housing in national
affairs it lies in the fourteen statutes which Parliament has passed in the
past sixty or seventy years relating to this ever.expanding problem
with its protean features. Successive governments came to realise that
the provision of new dwellings, the standard of fitness of existing houses
and the clearance of those where defects were irremediable were
responsibilities too massive for private ownership to discharge and could
only be adequately borne by the whole community. Moreover, the
population of the country (England and Wales) had increased from
32,527,843 in 1901 to 43,744,924 in 1951. But full credit at the same
time must be given to many private owners, housing corporations and
charitable bodies for their notable contributions in dealing with housing
problems from the days of the monastic Orders, the Elizabethan almshouses
and many benefactors till the time of George Peabody and others
who made charitable trusts in Victorian times.
The City Council under the powers of the Housing of the Working
Classes Act of 1890 made its first contribution in new housing in 1903
by the erection of three blocks in Regency Street. Prior to the last war
under the powers granted by successive Housing Acts some 1,557 flats
had been erected in the City and when Churchill Gardens programme
is completed the Council will have provided for 3,252 families exclusive
of the projected scheme at Warwick Way where 280 flats are proposed.
The difficulty of providing alternative accommodation for the persons
displaced by closure or demolition was a serious handicap in the early
years of the period under review and during 1930 and 1931 only three
Closing Orders were made.
In 1932, however, the City Council considered that, as the housing
situation had become easier, the provisions of the statutes in relation
to underground dwellings and sleeping rooms should be more rigorously
enforced. In that year, although only one formal Closing Order was
made, owners and other persons having control of underground rooms
were communicated with warning them against reletting contrary to