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corresponding figure for 1956 was twenty-four and for 1955 twenty-nine.
The Committee has each year provisionally allotted a number of houses
for the rehousing of overcrowded families. In 1954 the number was twenty
and in the succeeding years eighteen, ten and six. With so many families
in restricted accommodation, there will each year be some who become
overcrowded by more than one unit by the natural increase in the family
and by the ageing of the children. The worst conditions of overcrowding
probably are not those in which a family living in a house with a permitted
number of say seven and a half, is perhaps 1½ units overcrowded as the
smaller family occupying a room with a permitted number of two which
is overcrowded by half a unit. The number of houses to be allocated for
the relief of overcrowding should not fall below the figure of six granted
last year.
4. Particularly when many houses were being built, the Council's
allocation of one sixth of those that became available for the rehousing
of families with a member suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis proved
sufficiently generous that the worst cases were rehoused in a few years.
Because of the increasing claims to what houses become available, the
Committee had to reduce the fraction to one tenth. Even the reduced
fraction of the smaller number of houses which came along proved
sufficient to meet the needs. The allocation in the last three years was
thirteen, eleven and ten. Because of the smaller number of houses to be
expected in the future, it might be as well to alter the basis of allocation,
discontinuing the practice of allotting a fraction of what becomes available
and instead allotting a fixed number. If that were done then that number
should be not less than the ten of last year.
The report of the Housing Officer indicated that to fulfil outstanding
commitments 270 houses would be needed. The Committee felt that
outstanding points scheme cases, being those of persons who had only
qualified by residence after the general waiting list was closed in 1952,
could no longer be specially provided for, but that any special cases
could be considered on their merits as hardship cases. The Committee
felt too it was no longer possible to continue the special allocation for
dealing with the balance of seventy-two dwellings originally associated
with the Poets Corner area, nor the allocation of twenty-four houses
reserved to facilitate the phasing of the original Northolt Road Clearance
cheme, the balance for which had had to be modified in the light of the
Minister's modification of the Council's Compulsory Purchase Order. A
special allocation of ten dwellings was necessary to enable the balance of
the fifteen "permitted" families of caravan dwellers to be rehoused from
the North Lodge caravan site, and a further special allocation of three
dwelhngs to facilitate the rehousing of the remaining families at Newton
Buildings. Apart from these factors, the Committee followed the same
broad principals adopted in previous reviews in reaching the following
Provisional allocation:-