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7
Health Department,
Town Hall,
Tottenham.
May, 1937.
To The Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Borough of Tottenham.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have pleasure in presenting the Annual Report on the Health and
Social Conditions of the Borough for 1936.
This is my twenty-fourth and last. The report is mainly statistical,
the requirements of the Ministry of Health being, however, strictly complied
with.
The present outstanding problem is that of housing the people
adequately. It has now assumed a double aspect. The first is the provision
of proper housing accommodation for those persons and families
living in dwellings unfit for human habitation. The second is the provision
of proper accommodation for persons and families living under
conditions of overcrowding.
The Housing Act, 1930, required that a five-year programme should
be formulated indicating what measures your Council proposed to adopt
to meet the first-mentioned aspect of the housing problem, and that was
done. But, before the five-year period had elapsed, it was found necessary
to relax in some measure the vigorous action that was being taken
to have old and otherwise decayed property condemned and demolished,
for it was easier and speedier to have such property pulled down than
to have new property erected to take its place. To add to that difficulty,
there is the equally or even more serious one—that there is little available
suitable vacant land in Tottenham for housing development.