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The Environment
Many of the personal health problems referred to elsewhere in this report clearly spring
from the conditions in which people live and work. There is some reason to believe that man is
more the product of his environment than of his genetic endowment, but the relationship of man to
his environment is complicated and as yet not clearly understood.
The notable expansion in the Health and Welfare Services and advances in clinical
medicine should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental truth that it would have been better
had we been able to reduce the need for these services by prevention rather than cure.
The sphere of the Public Health Inspectorate is constantly being enlarged by a continually
increasing number of statutes, orders and regulations, and by new sciences and techniques. But
the result of the wide variety of the measures taken to control or eliminate harmful factors in
environment in the terms of actual benefit to individuals and the community at large, cannot easily
be demonstrated or proved scientifically. The subtle inter-relationship of the effects of bad
housing; of the hazards of air pollution; of occupational stresses both physical and mental; of
noise; of the tensions of urban living, present a complex set of factors which defy scientific
analysis.
There is a need for re-thinking of the relative importance of prevention and cure and a
re-affirmation of the inherent superiority of prevention.
During the course of a year, hundreds of notices are served by the Department to
alleviate unsatisfactory housing conditions, but slum clearance is the most obvious and drastic
method of improving the environment, involving as it does demolition of large aggregations of
unfit and obsolescent properties and wholesale redevelopment. Three such areas situated in the
south of the Borough are currently being dealt with in this way - Beaumont Road, Cathall Road,
Avenue Road.
Slum clearance is only part of the problem of obsolescent housing. Outside the areas
scheduled for redevelopment and replacement, there are thousands of houses which are neither
bad enough to condemn by statutory standards, nor good enough for modern living.
Suitability for occupation is as much concerned with the environment in which a house
stands as with its physical condition and equipment. Living conditions in houses situated close
to industrial premises, railway viaducts and heavy traffic may become intolerable as a result of
noise, vibration and effluvia.
These twilight neighbourhoods represent the major part of the urban fabric, and
relatively speaking they are falling behind; the national income has increased several fold since
they were built, the standard of new housing has become much higher and ways of living have
greatly altered. The growing discrepancy between twentieth century standards and nineteenth
century housing and planning requires a new approach. Physical improvement of individual
houses is not enough: the environment, as well as the houses, must be brought up to acceptable
standard.
Neighbourhood improvement is a formidable undertaking. It involves segregation of
non-conforming industry from residential property, exclusion of through traffic, the creation of
open spaces and welfare facilities, the provision of garage space and off-street parking, and
generally to provide the area with as many as possible neighbourhood amenities now taken for
granted in new housing development.
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