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43
HOUSING
Inspection of Houses
Although the Housing Act required local authorities to carry out
systematic inspection of houses, this routine work has not been started
since the war. Most inspections are carried out on receipt of a complaint
and to obtain the carrying out of the necessary work, reliance is placed
more on the provisions of the Public Health Acts than on those of the
Housing Acts.
Repair of Houses
Improvement Grants. The Housing Act, 1949, authorised local
authorities to give assistance in respect of (a) the provision of dwellings by
means of the conversion of houses or other buildings (b) the improvement
of dwellings. Later legislation amended these provisions. The most
recent of these is the House Purchase and Housing Act, 1959, which came
into operation on the 14th June. There are now two grants, the discretionary
and the standard.
The revised conditions attaching to the discretionary grants are that
the minimum unexpired term which a lessee must be able to show is
reduced from 30 to 15 years; the period during which the conditions of the
grant have to be observed is reduced from 20 to 10 years; the owner
may repay part of the grant; and an owner-occupier is allowed to sell to
another owner-occupier without having to repay at all, provided the
vendor or a member of his family has lived in the house for three years
after receiving the grant.
The standard grant, an innovation, applies to dwellings erected
before 1944. They apply only to specific items and are subject to the same
conditions as discretionary grants. The amount of the standard grant
which an authority has a duty to make covers half the cost of whatever
is paid up to a maximum expenditure of £310 if the house has none of
the standard amenities. A grant for a bathroom is £25; hot water system
£75; a food store £10; wash basin £5 and water closet £40.
During the year, 42 applications were received for grants to improve
or convert houses. Thirty-six were recommended in principle, six being
disallowed. Fifteen applications were granted during the year, all to
owner-occupiers.
Slum Clearance Programme
The Council's proposals submitted to the Minister in August, 1955,
tor 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 ninetyone
houses in the Northolt Road area, four in Pinner Hill Road, ten in