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236
Annual Report of the London County Council, 1913.
fall on the education account. The Council took the view that it would be equitable in such event
to charge a portion of the cost against the Dwelling House Improvement Fund, out of which expenditure
on schemes under the Housing Acts for the re-arrangement or reconstruction of insanitary areas
is met. This the Council has no power to do under the present law and it was decided, therefore, that
application for the necessary authority should be made to Parliament in the session of 1914.
It often happens that a metropolitan borough council urges the acquisition of an alternative
site which, for the reasons stated above, would be more expensive than that selected by the Council,
and in certain circumstances the borough council might be disposed to bear some portion of the
additional cost involved by taking the more expensive site. It was therefore deemed desirable to
include in the application to Parliament a provision to enable any borough council to enter into a
voluntary agreement with the Council to contribute towards the cost should it deem it desirable to
do so.
Action taken
under Parts
I. and II. of
the Act of
1890.
Tabardstreet,
etc.,
scheme.
Under Parts I. and II. of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, the Council has
completed 13 schemes involving the displacement of 16,639 persons of the working classes, and in
lieu of the old houses which it has caused to be demolished, has provided new dwellings capable of
accommodating 15,020 persons.
The Council is at present carrying out another large scheme under Part I. of the Act of 1890, known
as the Tabard-street, Grotto-place and Crosby-row (Southwark and Bermondsey) Scheme, 1910, which
provides for the clearance of three distinct areas comprising altogether about 17 acres. The scheme
involves the displacement of 4,552 persons of the working classes, and rehousing accommodation has
to be provided on the Tabard-street area for not less than 2,580 persons.
The gross cost of the scheme, exclusive of the cost of erecting the new dwellings, is estimated
at £467,000, and the net cost at £389,900.
Progress has been made during the year with the acquisition of the various interests in the
properties required for the scheme.
The first section of the Tabard-street area has been cleared and a new road, 40 feet wide, constructed
from Tabard-street to Long-lane. At the end of the year under review tenders were about to
be invited for the erection on this section of the area of tenement dwellings designed to accommodate
570 persons.
In connection with the scheme, the Council will acquire three fully licensed public-houses and
also one house with a beer licence. In accordance with the usual practice of the Council all these
licences would be extinguished but, the Council during the year, without departing from its general
principles in connection with licensed premises, decided to give favourable consideration to an application
from the Home Counties Public House Trust, Limited, for the grant of a lease of a site on the
Tabard-street area with a view to the erection of a new public-house to be conducted upon the company's
special principles of disinterested management.
The proposal was to secure the transfer to this new house of the licence attached to one of the
existing public houses. The business was to be conducted upon methods entirely different from those
which govern the management of ordinary public-houses, the object of the Trust being not to make
large commercial profits, but, while paying a limited dividend necessary to obtain capital funds, to carry
out a work of social and temperance reform.*
During the year the Council considered an official representation under Part I. of the Act of
1890 relating to an area, about 7 acres in extent, known as the Brady-street area, Bethnal Green.
The representation included 528 houses and tenements inhabited by 3,058 persons of the working
classes. The density of population on the area was about 430 to the acre, as compared with 169 to
the acre for the borough of Bethnal Green, and 60 to the acre for the whole county of London. The
death rate of the area was stated to be 24.74 per thousand, as against 16.71 for the whole borough
and about 14 for all London.
Many or most of the houses on the area were in as hopelessly bad and decayed a condition, as
incapable of being made fit for human habitation, and as deserving of destruction as those in the
Tabard-street area. On the other hand, the ground plan construction of the Brady-street area,
although very defective, was not so objectionable as in the case of Tabard-street.
The Council felt that much could be done to mitigate the evils existing in the area by a
vigorous enforcement of the provisions of the Acts with regard to closing and demolition orders and
a judicious application of section 38 of the Act of 1890, which provides for the removal of obstructive
buildings. The borough council, whose duty it is to enforce these provisions, was averse from adopting
this method on the ground that they would not be effective, and that the cost incurred would fall
exclusively upon the local rate.
What mainly influenced the Council in arriving at a decision with regard to this area was the
important question of relative expense and the serious question whether the owners of the property
should not be called upon to bear a much larger part of the burden of improving or removing their
unhealthy and decayed houses. The Council felt that, under the present law, and with the existing
practice in valuation by arbitrators, landowners received and the ratepayers had to pay too much for
property of this description.
The attention of the public and Parliament had been strongly directed towards necessary
reforms in the provisions of the Housing Acts. A bill for this purpose passed the second reading by
a decisive majority in the House of Commons in the session of 1913. This bill, apart from the con-
Brady-street
area.
* The Council was obliged subsequently to abandon the experiment owing to the refusal of the licensing
justices to grant a transfer of the necessary licence either to the managing director of the Trust or to a resident
manager.