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59
CLEAN AIR
Smoke Control.
During December it looked as though the progress and the efforts
that had been made by Local Authorities with their Smoke Control Area
Programme was to be bedevilled by a shortage of open fire coke. Few
people would have forecast at the time of the Beaver Committee on
Atmospheric Pollution that during 1963 there would be a shortage of this
fuel but in parts of the country this is the position today. In December
1963 the Minister of Power issued a White Paper "Domestic Fuel Supplies
and the Clean Air Policy". This White Paper was followed by the Minister
of Housing and Local Government issuing Circular 69/63 which it was
pleasing to find emphasised the Government's intention to encourage and
facilitate vigorous action against urban smoke and confirmed that future
supplies of solid smokeless fuel would be adequate to meet the demands
of those householders in areas covered by confirmed smoke control orders.
Clean air is vital to the health and well-being of all people and in
spite of the temporary setback arising from the dwindling supplies of
open fire coke it would be a tragedy if the work of creating smoke control
areas did not proceed. It will, and in fact the end of the year saw the
planning of the changes necessary to meet the changing fuel situation.
In my annual report for 1962 I expressed the hope that 1963 would
see the whole of Roxeth and Roxbourne Wards covered by operative
smoke control orders.
This objective was achieved though it was necessary to ask the Minister
of Housing and Local Government to make a Suspension Order in respect
of Council owned houses, where it was found that the work involved
in the adaptation of the fire grates could not be completed by the date the
order became operative, namely 1st November.
During the year three smoke control orders became operative
bringing the total to six. The area covered at the end of the year being
1,043 acres embracing 8,999 dwellings and 384 other premises. The
shaded area on the map below indicates the areas covered by Orders
Nod. 1-6 and the hatched section to areas covered by Orders that will