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77
other purposes. Under the new conditions, therefore, a
Local Authority can proceed with housing reform in a
comprehensive manner. They can provide not only new
houses to meet the shortage, but also, where necessary for
proper housing accommodation, can clear away slums and
re-house the people; and for the loss on the total schemes
the local rates will not be burdened with more than a rate
of one penny in the pound."
The favourable terms, which are set out in the above
quotation and upon which Local Authorities may now rely,
should prove a powerful stimulus to any progressive Municipality
desirous of dealing in a practical and comprehensive
manner with the important and pressing matter of Housing
Reform. There is no use toying with the question. Past
experience shows clearly that only by a forward and systematic
policy in regard to the housing needs of a district can the
present unsatisfactory state of affairs be checked and gradually
improved. The failure of the Public Health Act, upon which
Sanitary Authorities have mainly relied in past years, is sufficiently
evident from the fact that the legislature has been
compelled to pass two or three drastic amending Housing
Acts to strengthen the Principal Housing Act, and, my
experience, as your Medical Officer of Health has convinced
me, that as an instrument for improving, or even of maintaining,
the standard of fitness for habitation of working-class
houses, the Public Health Act has proved signally ineffective.
Now that the State has come to their assistance by providing
funds from the Exchequer to relieve the local rates of
the heavy cost of Housing Schemes, the Council will, I have
no doubt, give full consideration to the needs of their district.
The proposals now submitted for their consideration are
based upon a hurried and imperfect survey of the district,
unavoidable owing to the form of survey requiring to be filled
in (with particulars of the needs of the district and proposals
as to the Council's Outline Scheme), and submitted to the
Ministry by the 31st of October. This difficulty has, moreover,
been enhanced owing to the absence of reliable data
in regard to the present sanitary state of housing generally in
the Borough. During the war the systematic inspection of
houses had to be modified and, for part of the time, discontinued,
and it has been impossible, in the circumstances, to
obtain evidence of the actual extent of the conditions now
prevailing. For the Form of Survey, reliance has had, therefore,
to be placed upon previous knowledge, aided by inspections
of typical streets and groups of houses. There is ample
proof, however, that in most of the lower Wards of the
Borough there is a pressing need for the improvement of the