[Report 1925] / Medical Officer of Health, Bradford-on-Avon U.D.C.

  • Bradford-on-Avon (England). Urban District Council.
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1925] / Medical Officer of Health, Bradford-on-Avon U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/24 (page 8)
    On January 2nd, 1921, work was begun on the first house, and lias been going on steadily ever since, with the result that there are sixty-four houses built and inhabited. More are in various stages of erection and will be finished during the New Year. Eleven houses have been built by private persons during the same period, nine of them being Bungalows and two Cottages, all of them received the assisting grant. In spite of these seventy-four houses being built there seems to be almost as great a shortage as there was before, and it is simply impossible to condemn any of those now existing, as there is nowhere for the people to go. The same remarks apply to overcrowding, the Council erected six cheaper houses at a rent of five shillings a week, to be let to jico] le who were overcrowded, but even at that rent it was found that the wages and the size of the families made it prohibitive. Until till cost of materials and labour come down and houses can be erected at a much less cost than can be done at present, so long will overcrowding be present and children will not grow up into sti'ong and healthy men and women, luckily for us we onl}' have three houses back to back, and as the town is built on hills the houses get more air and sunshine than they would were it built on the fiat. It is a pity that there is no means of licensing all houses to l)c let or sold, according to the cubic capacity’ of the bed-rooms, so that when application was made for a house the owner would merely have to ask the total number of persons coming, and then if the number was more than the house was licensed for he would have to refuse. Were such an act or by-law ever to come into force I would give the Sanitary Authority power to prosecute whenever it was infringed.