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657 temporary hutments and bungalows. At the end of the year 80 temporary
hutments and 450 bungalows remained in use, and 1,889 properties housing 3,578
families were held under requisitioning powers. The County Council in the
same period has erected some 4,200 units of living accommodation in this
borough.
Housing Applications. New applications for housing accommodation added to
the Council' s Housing Department's register totalled 1,920 and at the end of
the year 6,213 applicants remained on the register,
Families to the number of 1,283 were rehoused, 636 by the Borough Council
and 647 by the County Council. Eighteen of the families rehoused by the
Borough Council were recommended by this department on grounds of overcrowding
and two on health grounds: with regard to the families rehoused by the London
County Council, the corresponding figures are 46 and one respectively.
HOUSING ACT, 1949
This Act: which came into operation on the 30th July, 1949, inter alia
removed the references to "the working classes1' from certain provisions of the
Housing Act, 1936, and enables action to be taken under Section 9 (repair),
Section 11 (demolition), and Section 12 (closing), in respect of all houses.
It also empowers the local authority to provide housing accommodation for
persons of all classes.
SECTION 4 gives a local authority permissive powers to make advances to
persons for the purpose of -
(a) acquiring houses;
(b) constructing houses;
(c) converting into houses buildings which have been acquired by those
persons or acquiring buildings and converting them into houses; or
(d) altering, enlarging repairing or improving houses; whether the
houses or buildings are within or without the district of the authority
or council.
SECTION 20 empowers a local authority, subject to certain conditions, to
give assistance in respect of: -
(a) the provision of dwellings, by a person other than a local authority
or county council, by means of the conversion of houses or other
buildings;
(b) the improvement of dwellings by such a person, by way of making a
grant.
In nineteen instances the Council made advances under Section 4 of the
Act.
SMALL DWELLINGS ACQUISITION ACTS, 1899 to 1923
Applications for advances for the purpose of house purchase were granted
by the Council in fifty-seven instances.
RENT AND MORTGAGE INTEREST RESTRICTIONS ACTS, 1920 to 1939
In the case of certain houses subject to rent control, the tenant can, on
production of a certificate of disrepair from the sanitary authority, secure a
reduction in rent, In this connection seven certificates of disrepair were
issued and three certificates previously issued were revoked when the work
necessary to make the premises fit had been carried out.
TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING ACT, 1947
(Use of residential accommodation for business purposes)
Defence Regulation 68CA, which prohibited, except with the consent of the
local authority, the use of housing accommodation for other than residential