View report page

49
SITES FOR ERECTION OF WORKING CLASS
DWELLINGS.
(Special Report presented to the Council on March 15th, 1906.)
I have considered the reference to the Public Health
Committee from the Housing Committee (dated November
16th, 1905), and am of opinion that there is no insanitary
area in the Inner Wards of Lambeth Borough which I could,
conscientiously, advise the Council to condemn, and clear,
as a whole, under the Housing of the Working Classes Acts,
with a view to working-class dwellings being erected on the
cleared site. In my opinion, as Medical Officer of Health,
and with a special local experience of 10 years, area condemnation
as opposed to house condemnation is, as far as
Lambeth Borough is concerned, undesirable, and unnecessary—not
only for financial reasons but also from the point
of view of efficient sanitary administration. I am of opinion,
however, that systematic house-to-house inspections are
most desirable, especially in the inner wards of the borough,
so that all houses may be gradually levelled, and kept up to
a fair and proper sanitary standard, and any individual
houses, which may be found to be sanitarily unfit, dealt with
under the Public Health Acts, or condemned under the
Housing Acts, as may be required, with a view to them
being put into proper order and condition, and so rendered
fit for human habitation. To secure this, systematic houseto-house
inspection is merely a question of the number of
sanitary inspectors to be employed.
When a Sanitary Authority (e.g., Lambeth rJorough
Council) decides to take action under the Housing of the
Working Classes Acts, there are practically two ways of
doing so. The Medical Officer of Health may condemn (or,
in the words of the Acts, represent) on the ground of danger
to health,
(1) a large or small sized area; or
(2) an individual house.
The former course (i.e., condemning large or small sized
areas) displaces large numbers of persons on account of