View report page

35
called for under the Public Health Act's Notice, the Court of Summary
Jurisdiction could make a Nuisance Order ; non-compliance with this
might be followed by the infliction of penalties. The procedure for
obtaining the repair of houses is very much more direct when a Section
9 Notice of the Housing Act is served, because in default, the local
authority can themselves arrange for the work to be carried out, recovering
the expenses from the owner.
Since the end of the war, action on these lines has been taken,
Notices being served under Section 9 of the Housing Act and if necessary
the work being carried out in default. To-day, many owners on whom
Section 9 Notices are being served, are saying that they do not wish to
carry out the work. Before the war when there was any dispute between
the Authority and the owner on whether or not the house was considered
to be capable of repair at a reasonable cost, most often it would be the
Authority who would maintain that it was not and that they thought a
Demolition Order should be made, whereas the owner, in an endeavour
to keep his property, would claim that it could be made fit at a reasonable
cost. To-day, however, the roles are reversed, the Authority maintaining
that the house can be made fit at a reasonable cost and the owner objecting.
In many cases this would be because the rise in the cost of the work to
be done makes the sum a very large one, particularly having regard to
the small receipts, especially in those houses where the rents are controlled.
At ordinary times such a decision by the owner would merely
have meant that the Authority would have been looked to to rehouse
the tenants. With to-day's serious housing position, though, the disturbing
aspect is that the decision would result in the loss to the district
and to the country of a housing unit. Because of the Authority's
interest in this aspect of the problem it does not seem equitable for the
Authority to seek to compel an owner to incur expenditure which they
themselves could incur if they elected to acquire the property. It does
seem that serious consideration should be given to the question of the
acquisition of some of these houses which, unless this step were taken,
would be lost as housing units. It is not suggested that such a step should
be taken in regard to individual houses scattered throughout the district,
but that it might be considered where there are groups of houses where the
plot, when it ultimately became vacant, which it is hoped would be in a few
years' time when the houses are pulled down, will be of some value.
If houses were acquired in this way, it could not be expected that they
could be put into a really satisfactory state. They could never be
properties about which the Council could be proud and it is not expected
that all the money spent on them would be recovered. It may even be
that the houses will be of such a low standard that it might be decided
they shall be occupied by adults only, and not by children. But in
default of some such arrangement, the position would seem to be that
throughout the district there would be a number of these houses which
by to-day's standards are not considered to be in such a state of sanitary
disrepair as to call for demolition but, nevertheless, are suffering from
sanitary defects to such a degree that living in them must impair the
health of the occupants. This problem must be of very much greater
dimensions in some districts where, because of its magnitude, the