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144
themselves satisfied that means can be devised to ensure a supply of the requisite
labour and materials, and they have declared their readiness to adopt comprehensive
proposals for revising the apprenticeship system.
The Minister of Health has set up Committees to advise and assist him in
carrying out the scheme embodied in the Act, particularly as regards the development
and co-ordination of the supply of labour and materials for house building.
Local committees are also to be appointed in each area, composed of representatives
of the building employers and building operatives in the area.
The Act empowers the Council to provide houses to meet the special needs of
a metropolitan borough council or the City Corporation who are respectively
authorised to contribute towards the cost. The Council's expenses under the Act,
including money grants to private enterprise, are chargeable to general county
account.
Refund of
rates.
During the year the Council gave further consideration to the question of
refunding rates in respect of houses converted into flats, and adhered to its previous
decision to take no action under section 5 (1) (c) of the Housing, etc., Act, 1923,
relative to the refund of such rates.
Housing
programme.
The Council lost no time in considering the situation which would arise when
the Housing (Financial Provisions) Bill, 1924, became law. It was difficult to
obtain reliable data on which to base a computation of the necessities of London,
and as an immediate measure of relief and without setting the final limits of a
programme to be undertaken within any definite period, the Council, on 29th July,
1924, authorised the construction of some 20,000 houses to be undertaken strictly
within the provisions of the proposed Act. The capital cost of constructing these
houses may be roughly computed at £12,000,000.
Houses
completed.
Since the war the Council has completed up to 31st December, 1924, approximately
9,160 houses and flats, which contain a maximum accommodation, on the
basis of 2 persons a room, for about 68,800 persons. The houses and flats completed
during the year 1924 number 1,452, with accommodation for 9,935 persons.
Building
grants.
Particulars of the Council s scheme for the administration of the subsidy
provisions of the Housing, etc., Act, 1923, were set out in the Annual Report for
1923 (Vol. I, pp. 132-3). Up to 31st December, 1924, the Council had approved
proposals submitted by private builders for the erection of 1,118 houses to qualify
for subsidy on completion, the number of houses approved during the year being 644.
Unhealthy
areas.
The Housing, etc., Act, 1923, empowers the Minister of Health to make contributions
from the Exchequer towards the expenses incurred by local authorities
in carrying out improvement schemes under Parts I. and II. of the Housing Act
of 1890, such contributions being limited to one half of the estimated average annual
loss. The Minister has intimated that he is prepared to consider proposals involving
contributions from the Exchequer amounting to £50,000 a year, and a comprehensive
programme of slum clearance is being drawn up by the Council. A number of
schemes, of which particulars are given later have already been approved, and
some of them have been confirmed by the Minister of Health. Other schemes are
in course of orenaration.
White Hartlane
Estate.
Particulars of the Council's housing operations during the year are as follows
The development of about 56 acres of the White Hart Lane estate under the
State Assisted (1919) Scheme by the erection of 710 houses and flats was completed
in 1923. During 1924, arrangements were made for the development of the remainder
of the estate under the financial provisions of the Housing Act of that
year. In December, 1924, the Council accepted the tender of Wilson Lovatt &
Sons, Limited, amounting to £76,513 for the erection of 138 dwellings and two
shops along the Lordship-lane frontage of the estate. Lordship-lane may in the
future develop into a main shopping thoroughfare but the time has not yet arrived
when the erection of shops along the whole of this frontage would be just fied.
The buildings to be erected have, therefore, been designed to contain on the ground