View report page

36
the size of the family, consideration would be given to the question of
whether the penal provisions of the Housing Act should be used. The
Committee instructed that each such case learned of should be reported
to them. During this last year there have been six such cases. In one
the son of the family and his wife went outside the district to live in a
caravan, but on the wife developing tuberculosis, the family returned to
their former home ; this family was recommended for rehousing essentially
because of the tuberculosis. Another of the cases concerned a family of
a man, wife and nine children who came to this country from Canada,
where they had been for a number of years and went to the home of the
husband's mother ; as there was no other means of abating the overcrowding,
the family was offered accommodation in one of the half-way
houses.
The Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health in his Annual
Report for 1952 refers to some national housing statistics:—
In 1951, 7% of structurally separate dwellings in England and Wales
were shared by more than one household; the corresponding figure in
1931, was 9.2%. In terms of families, 15% of private householders were
sharing accommodation in a dwelling in 1951 compared with 19% in
1931. Other comparative figures are:—
1931 1951
Persons per household 3.72 3.19
Number of dwellings 9,123,000 11,934,000
Persons per room 0.83 0.73
Percentage of persons living in overcrowded
accommodation 6.94 2.16
New Houses
The total number of new permanent and temporary Council dwellings
completed and handed over by the end of the year since the end of the
war was 2,165.
4,747 dwellings have been provided since the war, these comprising
2,165 in new permanent and temporary Council houses, 657 in requisitioned
premises, 331 by the re-building of war destroyed houses, 1,281
permanent houses erected by private enterprise and 333 by the conversion
of existing houses.
Circular No. 29/53 of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government
dealt with the arrangements which should be made for securing the
transfer of families to new and large towns. It is proposed that Harrow
with 12 other Middlesex and two Hertfordshire Authorities in an
exporting sector be linked with
(1) Harlow, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage, and Welwyn
New Towns; and
(2) Aylesbury, Bletchley, Harpenden, Hertford, Letchworth, St.
Albans, and Swindon Expanding Towns;
being towns to which the exporting authorities would naturally seek to