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(ii) Housing Repairs and Rents Bill.
The Housing Repairs and Rents Bill, which is likely to become law
within a matter of weeks, will impose still heavier duties on the Health
Department, especially the sanitary inspectors.
This Bill is of special interest to the general public because it affects
rents, and tenants faced with a demand from the landlord for an increase
in rent may apply to the Local Authority for a certificate of disrepair which
will entitle them to refuse to pay the repairs increase until the house has
been put right. Before a certificate can be issued it will be necessary for the
Sanitary Inspector to carry out detailed inspection of the properties concerned,
and great care will have to be taken in the issue of these certificates,
for they may be contested by owners by appeal to the Court. It is reasonable
to assume that when this Bill becomes law a great public demand will be
made on the time of sanitary inspectors in dealing with applications from
tenants for certificates of disrepair and in giving evidence in Court regarding
appeals by owners.
(iii) Housing Circular No. 30/54.
The urgency with which the Government regards the housing situation
is indicated in the following quotation from Circular No. 30/54 issued by the
Ministry of Housing and Local Government as recently as last month
(22nd March):—
"As has been repeatedly stressed both in the White Paper (on the Housing
Repairs and Rents Bill) and in the debates, it is an essential part of the Government's
housing policy that local authorities should now take up again, as a matter
of urgency, the campaign of slum clearance which the war interrupted. Accordingly,
local authorities should forthwith resume the full exercise of their powers under
Part II and Part III (Clearance Areas) of the Housing Act, 1936, and continue
to do so until the proposals they will submit under clause I of the Bill (if
Parliament enacts it in broadly its present form) have been approved.
"In addition local authorities should now take steps to review housing
conditions in their areas. Although clause 1 of the Bill as it now stands allows
a period of twelve months for the submission of proposals, measures for dealing
in one way or another with unfit houses ought to be taken as quickly as practicable,
and preparatory work done now will enable proposals to be submitted and approved,
and action to be taken under the new law, earlier than would otherwise be
possible."
RECOMMENDATIONS.
In consequence of the great increase in the sphere of duties of sanitary
inspectors in order to comply with the extra work entailed by these additional
commitments, I recommend:—
(1) that steps be taken forthwith to fill the existing vacant posts
(Nos. D.14 and D.22) in the establishment—one Sanitary
Inspector and one G.D. Clerk; and
(2) that favourable consideration be given to the advisability of
increasing the existing establishment of Sanitary Inspectors from
10 to 12.
Such increase in establishment would merely have the effect of reducing
the number of inhabitants per Sanitary Inspector in Leyton to a figure
nearer to that of the recorded average in England and Wales.