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9
The motor factory and the associated factories in the
southern industrial area are employing up to 10,000 workpeople.
There appears to be an impression that at these factories there
is a demand for unskilled workmen who will be trained. Whether
this will be so after the full development of the works, remains to
be seen, but at the moment when the work is expanding, those
with previous experience at the work are employed in preference
to others. This results in there being a comparatively low percentage
of places occupied by the original local residents of the
estate, many of the employees having transferred from other parts
of the country where they had been engaged in work of a similar
nature. T hese are housed partly in, but largely outside, the area.
Private enterprise in the district is providing for some of these.
Many, however, are crowding into some of the local houses. The
extent to which this is possible is limited in the case of the houses
owned by the local council and by the London County Council,
but there is much sub-letting and taking in of lodgers in the
remaining property. In attempting to control this overcrowding,
one diflicult.y confronted is that the same room may be let to day
and to night tenants, an arrangement possible when work is carried
on in different shifts.
In view of the limitation of employment ot local labour;
the extent to which the employees live outside the district, where
they presumably spend their earnings; the effect of the derating
act in reducing the contribution made by the factories to meet
local expenditure; and the very large expenditure incurred by the
local authority, especially in the matter of drainage rendered
necessary by the establishment of the factories, the advantages
accruing to the district by the erection of the factories appear somewhat
problematical.