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Underground rooms.— In the report of 1919 it was stated with regard to these
rooms that: "Despite all efforts quite a number that had been closed and disused
for some years were once more found to be occupied. In these cases practically
all that could be done was to warn both the person who had let and the person
who had taken the rooms and to ensure that the rooms should be put into as
good condition as possible. Fortunately, only the best of the rooms were re-let
and many that were, or on account of neglect had become, unsuitable remain
empty."
Since 1919 conditions have not changed, and despite the greatest care and
watchfulness rooms of this kind are occupied. In 1926 6 cases in which the
occupation was definitely illegal were dealt with.
C.—PREMISES THAT ARE NOT BUT SHOULD BE
REGISTERED.
For a variety of reasons the number of premises in the Borough in which meals
are provided or food is sold ready cooked or is prepare 1 for sale is very large. At the
end of 1925 there were 276, this number including: restaurant, dining room and
coffee shop kitchens, 180; tea-rooms and pastry-cooks, 50; hotel kitchens, 20; fried
fish shops, 21; and fish-curers, 5. In addition, there were a number of shops in
which meat, ham, sausages, &c., were cooked and sold only over the counter.
None of these premises is, or is required to be, registered, and apart from
fish-curing and fish-frying premises, which are required to be in compliance with
certain requirements contained in by-laws of the London County Council, none of
them is subject to any very special provisions. Any individual, in short, may take
any sort of premises, and proceed to cook and prepare food for sale; no notice to
the local authority is required, and unless compliant is received, or infection or
suspicious illness occurs, or the premises are visited by an inspector, the fact that
they are so used may never be discovered.
That this is so appears to be at least unsatisfactory. On account of changed
conditions the amount of home cooking done is steadily diminishing, and more
and more the cook-shop, the restaurant, and the cooked-food shop are being
resorted to. In the poorer quarters of the Borough the extent to which the friedfish
shop, for example, is depended upon may be judged from the number of
children making purchases during the school dinner hour, and the number of adult
and child customers in the evenings. In the evenings, too, the busiest shops in
the main thoroughfares are those where cooked foods are retailed over the counter.
Legislation, which did not foresee these changes, contains no provision for
dealing properly with the premises, and the Legislature has made no attempt to
obtain control over them. Such places as the law, as it now stands, requires to be
registered or licensed are mainly those in which uncooked food is dealt with, e.g.,
slaughter-houses, cowsheds, milk shops, etc.
Having regard to the changes, the law should be extended in order to provide
for registration of the cooked-food premises also. Before establishing a restaurant
or eating rooms of any description, a cook-shop or a cooked-food shop, it should
be necessary for application for registration to be made to the local authority, and
registration should not be granted until the premises had been inspected and
passed as suitable.
All this has been said many times before, and in the meantime, for departmental
and inspection purposes, a register is kept at the Public Health Office, and
particulars with regard to new premises are added as they are found.
As a matter of routine, a number of restaurants, etc., are visited each week
by the Food Inspector, and any matters discovered at these inspections are dealt
with at once. In 1925 the total number of inspections was 1,072, the number
of notices served being 23. If and when registration is made compulsory, the
work of supervision and control will be greatly simplified, though it is just possible