View report page

55
HOUSING
Inspection of Houses
Although the Housing Act requires local authorities to carry out
systematic inspections of houses, this routine work has not been started
since the end of the war because there is sufficient work to be done arising
from the complaints received from tenants about the state of the houses
they occupy, and the present numbers of recommendations by the Public
Health Committee for the rehousing of occupants of houses on which
Demolition Orders or Closing Orders are being made are sufficient
embarrassment to the Housing Committee. If the house complained of
is one of a number where it is thought the conditions might be much the
same, then, although no complaints had been received from the occupiers
of the other houses, all the houses in the block would be inspected. That
is about the limit of attention to houses to which the Inspectors had not
been called in by the tenants.
Repair of Houses
Improvement Grants. The provisions of the Housing Acts 1949/54
as to improvement grants were superseded by Sections 30-38 of the
Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1958 which came into force on 23rd
October, 1958.
Twenty-eight applications were received in 1958. This was much the
same number as in the previous year. Of these, eighteen were granted, all
to owner occupiers. Up to the end of 1958, 128 applications had been
received. Of these, sixty-eight had been approved, the vast majority of
them being applications from owner-occupiers.
Slum Clearance Programme
The Council's proposals submitted to the Minister in August, 1955,
for dealing with unfit houses in the district referred to 577 properties. It
was expected that the clearing and replacement of these houses would
be carried out in five years.
At the time the survey was completed in April, 1955 the 577 houses
included twenty-nine which were already the subject of confirmed
Clearance Orders, thirty-nine the subject of confirmed Demolition Orders
and 115 about which action had already been started. This 115 included
the ninety-one houses in the Northolt Road area, four in Pinner Hill
Road, ten in Palmerston Road, four in Crown Street and six at Little
Common. In April, 1955 then 183 of the 577 houses were the subject of
some action.
The position at the end of 1958 was that of the twenty-nine properties
in Clearance Areas, fourteen had been demolished. Of the others five
were vacant. Of all these 183 houses, by the end of 1958 fifty-two had
been demolished and twenty-eight were vacant ; ninety-one of them are
in the Northolt Road proposals.
Of the remaining 394 unfit houses included in the clearance proposals,
130 have been the subject of some action. At the end of the year twenty-one
had been demolished, forty were the subject of an order, thirty-two were
the subject of action and seventeen had been reconditioned.