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10
The year under review has been an important one in the field of
housing. The Government directed local authorities to take active steps
to review housing conditions in their areas, and forthwith resume full
exercise of their powers and statutory responsibilities under the Housing
Acts, 1936/54, in relation to slum clearance and the enforcement of
essential repairs to defective dwelling-houses, and to resume the practice,
curtailed owing to wartime conditions, of keeping records in accordance
with the Housing Consolidated Regulations, 1925/32.
Section 5 of the Housing Act, 1936, requires local authorities to
cause inspection of their districts to be made from time to time in order
to ascertain whether any house therein is unfit for human habitation.
This duty is supplemented by section 1 of the Housing Repairs and
Rents Act, 1954, which requires local authorities to submit to the
Ministry of Housing and Local Government proposals for dealing with
houses in their districts which appear to be unfit for human habitation
and with any other houses which they consider should be included in
clearance areas.
The specified duties under the above statutory provisions carry
with them the implied duty of making a housing survey.
The nature, scope and findings of the preliminary survey of the ten
areas in the Borough previously selected for redevelopment was reported
to, and considered by, the Council in 1954. A further survey was
undertaken in the early part of 1955 to provide information required
by section 1 of the Housing Repairs and Rents Act. The Council's
proposals in this respect were submitted to the Ministry of Housing and
Local Government in August. This survey was carried out on a block
basis and confined to districts known to contain aggregations of houses
likely to be dealt with under slum clearance procedure, and whereas the
information obtained was sufficient for the purpose, a large number of
the inspections made could not, because of their hurried and cursory
nature, be properly recorded as inspections under the Housing Consolidated
Regulations.
The work of the District Sanitary Inspectors was re-organised in
accordance with the Government's direction to local authorities to resume
full exercise of their powers and statutory responsibilities under the
Housing Acts. Inspection cards were introduced to facilitate housing
inspections during the course of routine district work. Houses visited
as a result of complaint, applications for certificates of disrepair, housing
applications, overcrowding, etc., are now being recorded on forms provided
and broadly classified in three categories:—
Cat. A : Houses which appear to be unfit for habitation to such a
degree as to justify their being dealt with under section 11
or 12 (demolition or closure) or section 25 (slum clearance)
of the Housing Acts, 1936/54.