First report of her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the housing of the working classes.

Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report of her Majesty's Commissioners for inquiring into the housing of the working classes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    Chamberlain, 12,377. Chamberlain, 12,378. Chamberlain, 12,385. Chamberlain, 12,413. Chamberlain, 12,495. Young, 6017. of the Lands Clauses Acts, which is said to produce in every case an excessive value. But another cause to which greater objection is taken is the method pursued by the official arbitrators in deciding that all interests in such property to be taken com- pulsorily must be dealt with at one and the same time. The evidence of Mr. Chamberlain as to what happened at Birmingham in this way was as follows :— “ It was intended to purchase the freeholds only, and to leave the temporary interests, the remains of leases and short tenancies, to run out unless they could deal with the owners of them on very reasonable terms; but they were forced by Sir Henry Hunt to purchase all these temporary interests, which involved the necessity for giving compensation for the businesses established in connexion with these temporary interests. That enabled the owners to make very large demands, which were thought in many cases quite unreasonable, and which certainly added greatly to the cost of the property which had to be purchased after his decision was made known, that is to say, it increased the prices paid under agreement as well.” Mr. Chamberlain points out that one of the most difficult interests to purchase is the interest in a business; it is a specu- lative thing ; the moment a man has to value his business he puts upon it the most extraordinary valuation; he makes all sorts of sanguine calculations as to what he anticipates that he will do, and generally appears to be convinced that he cannot do the same thing even though he moves only a few yards further off. The result is that when the case goes before a jury or an arbitrator he gets never what he asks but always a vast deal more than the property is really worth. And the witness goes on to say “ if we “ were allowed to say to him, You have only got a 10 years’ ] “ interest in this place; it is not necessary to purchase before the “ end of 10 years, and therefore we will wait until they have run “ out when you will have to find another location, I am quite ■ “ sure that we should have very much more moderate returns.” The witness estimates that the additional charge thrown upon the Birmingham improvements by the arbitrator’s decision was 300,000/. or 400,000/., that being the amount in excess over what the property would have fetched had it been disposed of in the ordinary way. From the occurrence of cases like this it is recommended by witnesses that the arbitrator should be required ’ to give only such value as willing sellers would obtain in the • market, supposing there were willing purchasers; that is to say, if it were proved that in any particular district the ordinary price of land was 30 years’ purchase of the rental, that would be the price which a willing purchaser would give to a willing seller; but the practice is, supposing 30 years’ purchase to be the ordinary price, to run it up to 35 or 40 years’ purchase when a public authority wants to buy, and it avbs mentioned that 50 years’ purchase of the rental was often given under compulsion. This evidence is corroborated by that of other witnesses, among whom Mr. Young, the surveyor of the London School
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