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42
Informal notices served as a result of inspections carried out
under Section 9, Housing Act, 1936, totalled 140, and work was
in progress in respect of 23 of these notices at the end of the year.
ABATEMENT OF OVERCROWDING AND APPLICATIONS
FOR RE-HOUSING.
The Overcrowding statistics relating to the year 1938 revealed
that at the end of that year, 1,584 families, occupying 1,584 dwellings
and comprising 8,298 persons, were living in overcrowded
conditions according to the standards set out in the Overcrowding
provisions of the Housing Act, 1936.
The continual movement of population during and since the
war years has made it impossible to maintain these records with
complete accuracy and, failing a systematic Overcrowding Survey
similar to that undertaken in the Borough in 1935-36, the extent
of overcrowding can only be estimated in relation to enquiries
received for housing accommodation by the London County Council,
the Hackney Borough Council and the Public Health Department.
In these circumstances, the pre-war figures concerning Overcrowding
have been deemed to be of no value in assessing the extent
of Overcrowding prevailing at the present time, and the figures
quoted here refer only to cases of Overcrowding which have come to
the notice of the Department since the year 1945, as a result of
housing applications made to the London County Council and the
Hackney Borough Council, through reports from sanitary inspectors
and health visitors, and from enquiries received at the Public
Health Department.
This has been considered the most practicable method of
arriving at the current register, bearing in mind the probability
that most families recorded in the Overcrowding Register before
1945 will have renewed their applications on those grounds more
recently.
The information obtained from these sources gives the following
results:—
(1) Number of dwellings overcrowded at 31st
December, 1949 915
(2) Number of families occupying these
lings 1,254
(3) Number of actual persons occupying these
dwellings 4,754
The 915 dwellings stated to be overcrowded at the end of the
year are, therefore, the total number which have come to the