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The social conditions of Southgate are substantially the same
as those set out in last year's Annual Report.
Overcrowding and the use of dwelling houses by more families
than was ever intended, has continued and shows little sign of
abatement. Distribution of the population still shows a weighting
towards the older age groups, although the recent rise in the birth
rate, if continued, will inevitably increase the younger age groups
at the expense of the old. This trend is already being shown in the
large waiting lists for most of our schools, and represents a serious
problem which will have to be faced.
It is still true to say that Southgate is a dormitory, and that
industrial development has not and probably never will be an
important factor in the life of the community.
Now that environmental hygiene is being partly divorced from
the personal Health Services, the part which the Borough Council
can and should play in maintaining and, where possible, improving
living conditions and amenities within the Borough, assumes an
ever greater importance. The significance of environmental hygiene,
more especially housing and its allied problems, is apt to be forgotten,
either wholly or partially, in the welter of talk and literature
centring round the Personal Health Services. Environmental
hygiene is never spectacular; the advantages which follow close
attention to the sanitary services are seldom apparent to the casual
observer, although the disadvantages are very quickly realised and
disliked. It is equally true that errors in environmental hygiene are
very difficult to remedy; once the harm has been done the results are
all too often permanent. For those very cogent reasons the importance
of this branch of preventive medicine, for it is medicine in
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