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the provision in advance of an equal amount of accommodation
in the shape of new working-class dwelling-houses to
house the displaced persons.
The following points are quoted from the recentlypublished
pamphlet on Housing and the powers of Local
Authorities for the information of the Committee:—
"One of the principal difficulties in the past has been
the price which has had to be paid for land and buildings.
This has deterred Local Authorities from taking action.
A serious burden on the rates might be involved, and it
was unfair to pay high prices for insanitary property,
especially in cases where the owners had failed in their
duty.
"If a slum area is to be cleared, the price to be paid
for it is the value of the land alone, without any payment
for the buildings. If the whole of the land in an improvement
scheme is a slum area and is required by the scheme
to be used for rehousing (or, as may be desirable in some
cases, partly for rehousing and partly as an open space),
the price to be paid for the land will be its value to a
person who proposes to develop it for working-class
dwellings, subject to the restrictions imposed by the
scheme. The land might fetch a big price for business
premises or factories, and, in the past, the Local Authority
would have had to pay this price for it, even though it
was used for re-housing.
In some cases the Local Authority will find it necessary
to acquire buildings which do not form part of the
unhealthy area, but are included for the purpose of
making the scheme efficient. The compensation payable
to the owners in these circumstances is not affected by the
new Housing Act.
"Perhaps the most important provision in the Act for
helping to get improvements carried out is that under
which financial assistance is to be given by the State to
Local Authorities who clear away slums and re-house the
persons displaced. Under the new Act, Local Authorities
may receive the same kind of assistance in clearing any
area, if re-housing is provided, whether the re-housing
is on the cleared area or on another site, as for the provision
of new houses, where the Ministry of Health are
satisfied that the slum clearing and the re-housing are
necessary.
"It has to be borne in mind that often much the best
plan will be to clear an area and then to use the land not
for housing (for which it may be badly suited), but for