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detailed house to house inspection has yet been carried out. The property
south of Stoke Newington Church Street is, generally speaking, of
poorer type than in the northern area.
The staff of sanitary inspectors is barely sufficient to enable the
ordinary routine duties of district sanitary inspection to be carried out
with reasonable efficiency when considered in conjunction with the
demands arising from neglect during the war years.
The Minister of Health gave instructions in Circular No. 1866, dated
8th September, 1939, that no house should be demolished except when
such a course is absolutely unavoidable. The Circular states:
"The Minister has decided that it is necessary to defer the holding
of inquiries into slum clearance . . . "Where an order has been
confirmed by the Minister so that it becomes the duty of the local
authority to proceed with the steps which will end with the demolition
of the property, the Minister is of opinion that, save in exceptional
circumstances, the steps taken should stop short of actual
demolition. In view of the possible destruction of housing accommodation
by attacks from the air, it is clearly desirable that the
existing supply of accommodation should not be demolished."
This Circular has never been rescinded but it has been necessary in
some Boroughs recently to "represent" for clearance even where the
sites were too small for use in rehousing. However, this Circular and,
indeed, the necessities of the housing situation suspended for the time
being clearance work under the Housing Act, 1936. Moveover, the
licensing system, which endeavoured as far as possible to divert materials
and manpower towards the erection of municipal dwellings, prevented
any further work on the reconditioning of dwellings under the Housing
Act, 1936. The Minister of Health gave instructions that the licensing
officers should always issue licences to meet the requirements of sanitary
notices under the Public Health (London) Act, 1936, but at the same
time the sanitary authorities were informed that the quota must under
no circumstances be exceeded and that all sanitary notices must be
restricted to the very minimum of repair work or renewal of sanitary
fittings. The quota was an entirely arbitrary figure based on pre-war
conditions and it was found impossible in most London boroughs to issue
adequate sanitary notices if these instructions were followed.
Several meetings of medical officers of health were held at the
Ministry of Health where medical officers were told that quota figures
must not be exceeded, and on more than one occasion the Ministry were
informed that, in the opinion of many medical officers of health, more