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55
The Minister of Housing and Local Government on the 22nd November,
1960 confirmed without modification, the Borough of Harrow
Smoke Control (No.1) Order, 1960 made pursuant to Section 11 of the
Clean Air Act, 1956, the Order to come into operation on the 1st
September, 1961. Notice of this was given in the local Press and all
residents in the area were written to and sent all relevant documents.
At their meeting on January 3rd, 1961 the Public Health Committee
accepted the recommendation of the Clean Air Sub-Committee that the
area to be declared as the Borough of Harrow Smoke Control (No. 2)
area should be that bounded on the south by Eastcote Lane (part), by
Alexandra Avenue (part) on the east, by the London Transport Executive
(Piccadilly) railway line to the north and by the Borough boundary with
Ruislip-Northwood on the west. This is an area of some 450 acres on
which there are some 3,000 houses.
In Circular No. 38/60 the Ministry of Housing and Local Government
invited Local Authorities in black areas to review the progress they
have made in planning and executing the programmes of domestic smoke
control necessary in their districts. Unless additional staff are brought
in to help with the work, all the work that has to be done before it is
possible to submit an application to the Minister for an order to be made,
has to be carried out with the present number of Inspectors. Any special
drive to speed-up progress in the making of orders can only be done at
the expense of the ordinary work of these Inspectors. However desirable
it is felt that more rapid progress shall be made on these lines, in a district
of this sort where the problem is really not a very serious one, there can
be no question of the work being done at the expense of other more
important duties. Unless then the machinery can be modified so that the
volume of work demanded is reduced, it must be many years before the
whole of the district can be covered by Smoke Control Orders.
While no objections were lodged to the Council's proposals about
the No. 1 Order, some people are not convinced of the need for such
measures. Criticisms are mostly either on the grounds that domestic
smoke is not a real problem or that these measures, while dealing with
smoke, do nothing at all to reduce the far more harmful products of
combustion—the oxides of sulphur. Even in those localities where much
the black smoke came from the industrial chimneys, the position today
is that industry is playing its part to the full. In an area of this sort with
so little industrial smoke, the domestic chimney is the more serious
offender. There are many reasons for this. Domestic smoke is produced
by distillation at comparatively low temperatures and contains much
higher proportions of the damaging tar and hydro-carbons than does
industrial smoke. It is said that 100 lbs. of coal burned in the open
domestic fire emits 2¼—5 lbs smoke ; from the factory furnace the
amount is only ½ lb. Industry today is emitting very much less than the
one million tons of smoke discharged each year from the domestic
chimney ; some put the figure as low as one hundred thousand tons. The
smoke from the higher shaft of the factory has more chance of being
distributed with a reduction in concentration as contrasted with the