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ROUTINE INSPECTION
Whilst many housing defects are brought to light by the complaint of the occupant,
routine inspections are also necessary to maintain the best possible housing conditions, and
this is particularly true of houses in multiple occupation, for which recent legislation requires
higher standards. There are however limits to the usefulness of such inspections where action
by the Council will require the rehousing of some occupants, or where it is already proposed that
the premises shall be demolished in the future, and the Planning Officer is always consulted
when routine inspections are proposed.
LACK OF REPAIR
The standard of repair of houses has much improved during the past 10 years, but there
remain many in which maintenance is minimal. Most are occupied by more than one family, and
routine inspections deal both with general disrepair and with the provision of such additional amenities
as are needed for the occupants. Whilst such routine inspections are generally carried out on the
basis of streets or defined areas, individual houses of this type becoming known to the Department
are also inspected with a view to the service of a comprehensive notice under Section 9 of the
Housing Act, 1957.
OVERCROWDING
The Housing Act, 1957 lays down standards for the number of persons who may occupy
a dwelling. This is based upon three separate considerations:-
(a) the necessity for persons of opposite sex over the age of 10 years not to
sleep in the same room (except husband and wife),
(b) the number of rooms occupied and
(c) the size of each room.
A child under the age of 10 years counts as one half and a child under one year of age is not
reckoned at all.
It is an offence for persohs to occupy, or for a landlord to allow occupation of, a dwelling
by such a number of persons as will cause statutory overcrowding. It is not an offence should the
overcrowding be caused by natural increase in the size of the family.
There is a distinction, not always appreciated, between overcrowding and over-occupation;
thus a large house with inadequate washing and W.C. facilities may well be over-occupied, although
the number of occupants is well below that allowed on overcrowding standards; an overcrowded
house is necessarily over-occupied.
The Council has powers to deal with overcrowding, and a landlord permitting such an
offence is liable to heavy penalities, yet to deal with it may involve the eviction of some occupants.
It is extremely difficult for families, especially those with young children, to find alternative
accommodation within the Borough, and it is impossible for the Council to rehouse them save at
the expense of those on the waiting list who may themselves well be, because of overcrowding
caused by the natural increase noted above, in even worse housing conditions.
For these reasons routine inspections for the purpose of discovering the extent of overcrowding
are not generally made. Most cases of overcrowding are discovered by the scrutiny of
applications for rehousing, and there may be more overcrowding amongst those who have recently
moved into the Borough and are not yet eligible for admission to the housing waiting list than
amongst those families already known to us. There are undoubtedly both undiscovered cases
and errors in the number of those carried forward from year to year; those from the former Metropolitan
Boroughs are not revisited if the visit might cause distress by raising false hopes of
early rehousing by the Council.
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