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houses. The total number of dwelling houses included in orders confirmed
between the 1st July, 1945 and the 31st December, 1955 is 686.
Some 485 new dwellings were completed by the Borough Council during the
year and 486 were under construction at the end of the year. Since 1920 the
Borough Council has provided 5,091 dwellings, including 657 temporary hutments
and bungalows. At the end of the year 364 of these bungalows and 70 hutments
remained in use, and families to the number of 3,218 were housed in properties
held under requisitioning powers. In the same period the County Council has
erected 5,620 units of living accommodation in the borough as well as 414 units
of temporary accommodation During the year that Authority completed 126
units. and a further 539 were under construction on December 31st.
HOUSING APPLICATIONS, New applications for housing accommodation totalled
1,393 and at the end of the year there remained on the Borough Council's Housing
Department's register 5,998 applicants. Including the transfers to other
accommodation and mutual exchange between tenants, a total of 937 families
on the Borough Council's housing register were rehoused and 416 families were
rehoused by the London County Council.
HOUSING ACT, 1949
This Act, which came into operation on the 30th July, 1949, inter alia
removed the references to "the working classes" 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 (Power of local authorities to make advances for purpose of increasing
housing accommodation) 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 (Grants to persons other than local authorities for improvement of
housing accommodation) 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
The Ministry of Housing and Local Government Circular 36/54 revised the
standard of fitness to which a dwelling must conform in order to qualify for a
grant and also reduced the qualifying minimum expenditure from £150 to £100
The requirement in Section 15 (2) of the Act that in order to qualify for
grant a dwelling must provide satisfactory housing accommodation for at least
thirty years is amended by Section 16 of the Housing Repairs and Rents Act,
195k to allow the Minister or the local authority, as the case may be, to
approve proposals if satisfied that they are likely to provide satisfactory
accommodation for more than fifteen years and "that it is expedient in all the
circumstances that the proposals should be approved". The same section
removes the limit of a maximum expenditure of £800 per dwelling and substitutes
therefor a maximum to the grant itself of £400, with the proviso that where the