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Sanitary administration was beset by many difficulties. Conditions
necessitated by the war had to be borne which would not have
been tolerated in other times, and when remedies were feasible the
absence of labour and materials frequently precluded action being
taken. The record of achievement on the part of your sanitary staff,
under the experienced guidance of your Chief Sanitary Inspector, as
indicated in the pages which follow, shows that every opportunity
which was possible in the circumstances was taken to promote local
hygienic conditions.
Housing work caused us the greatest sense of frustration. The
relief of ever-growing overcrowding was virtually an impossibility,
whilst remedial measures to premises had to be limited to the most
urgent and pressing essentials. No one can deny that housing is now
our first priority, but it is as well to remember that houses have a
long life, often unfortunately longer than is warranted, and what we
provide now will be with us for many years to come. Shall we, in
our present justifiable impatience, create slum dwelling for 1960, or
shall we take care to limit our emergency programme of temporary
houses to those we are able to replace within their useful life? Carshalton
has, to all intents and purposes, reached its maximum stage
of desirable development, and our present overcrowding can only be
satisisfactorily solved by one or other of two events—either a natural
decrease in the population or the transfer of population outside the
district. Discarding the first policy of " wait and see," we are left
with the second as the only possible solution.
The distribution and control of food was, for very necessary
reasons, taken over by the Ministry of Food. Supplementary to the
existing statutory provisions of the Food & Drugs Act, administered
by local authorities under the aegis of the Ministry of Health, the
newly created Ministry of Food has, since its establishment, issued a
series of Orders under the Defence Regulations for the protection of
the public health and of the public from fraud. Although they owe
their origin to the increased temptation to exploit war-time food
scarcity, those measures which prescribe standards for everyday commodities
would greatly facilitate the supervisory functions of the
Council in the post-war period, and it is to be hoped that, except
where they serve an exclusive war-time purpose, they will be
continued when the Defence Regulations lapse.
This brief review would not be complete without some reference
to Civil Defence. When hostilities threatened, the central authority
was faced with the necessity for some scheme for dealing with the
results of that bombing of the civilian population which could with
certainty be anticipated. In local government they found an experienced
organisation already in being which offered a ready solution
of the problem. How well the local municipal authorities shouldered
this great additional responsibility, how efficiently they mustered local
resources in the service of their own populations and in the help of
their neighoburs through six long, anxious years has brought fitting
tribute from those best able to judge. Carshalton, like other London
districts, has its scars. Many of its residents suffered injury and 76
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