Housing : being the annotated texts of The Housing Act, 1957 and the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1958 / by J.D. James.

  • Great Britain
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Housing : being the annotated texts of The Housing Act, 1957 and the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1958 / by J.D. James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/596 (page 17)
    INTRODUCTION houses, the test there being the rent of the house; s. 7, however, which extends s. 6 to certain contracts of service, is confined to workmen employed in agriculture, who may perhaps be regarded as part of the working class. It has been observed that the social revolution (of the first half of this century) has made the term “ working classes ”’ quite inappropriate to-day (Green (H. E.) & Sons v. Minister of Health, supra). Where the term is still retained, however, it must, it is submitted, be given something like its old meaning. For one particular purpose, the Housing Act, 1936, contained a definition of the expression working class; see the Eleventh Schedule thereto, para. 11 (e) (repealed by the Act of 1949 and therefore not repro- duced in the Ninth Schedule to the Act of 1957). For that repealed definition see 11 Halsbury’s Statutes (2nd Edn.) 609. More generally, the old meaning “ denoted a class which included men working in the fields or the factories, in the docks or the mines, on the railways or the roads, at a weekly wage ”’; per Denning, J. (as he then was) in the case cited, supra. 3. Particular Changes in Part II Letting of small houses. Among the more particular changes of the general law since 1936 is that reproduced in s. 6 of the Act of 1957, post, relating to the implied conditions on letting small houses. This was one of the provisions (then s. 2 of the Act of 1936) where qualifying words (“in all respects reasonably ’’) were struck out. by the Act of 1954, as noted above. The more particular change was the alteration of the limits of rent there mentioned by the Rent Act, 1957 (see para. 22 of the Sixth Schedule to that Act (now repealed); 103 Statutes Supp. 128). The Rent Act, 1957, came into operation on 6th July 1957, which explains the reference to that date in s. 6, post. Unfit houses beyond repair. When a house was unfit for habitation, and incapable of being rendered fit at reasonable expense, the Housing Act, 1936, as originally enacted, provided a procedure for the demolition of the house under a demolition order. This procedure remains (ss. 16 et seq., post) but with various alternative procedures to meet special circumstances. In. demolition: order procedure there are three main stages. First, the condition of the house must be considered at a meeting, after service of “notice of time and place ”’ (s. 11 of the 1936 Act; now s. 16, post), and persons served with this notice may offer undertakings about the repair or use of the house. If such an undertaking is accepted by the authority, or on appeal by the county court judge, demolition will not be necessary. Secondly, if no undertaking under the procedure of the 1936 Act, as originally enacted, was offered, or none was accepted, or an undertaking was accepted but broken, a demolition order had to be made. This could not be avoided, for example, by making a closing order; that alternative applied to “ part of a building ’’ and a house could not be so regarded even if it was part of a terrace of houses and needed for the support of the other houses (Burch v. Wigan Corpn., [1952] 2 All E.R. 893; 3rd Digest Supp.). There was no procedure for revoking a demolition order. The third stage was the vacation of the house and its demolition. Apart from emergency regulations (see notes to s. 34, post), it was an offence to enter into occupation of a condemned house (see now Ss. 22 (4), post). Because of the effects of the 1939 War, and other circumstances, diffi- culties arose in practice, particularly at the second and third stages mentioned above, because :— (i) it was desirable to allow ERP OL ay, occupation of sub-standard houses for the time being; (ii) some condemned houses had in fact reat made fit, and there were others which could be made fit, and it might often be desirable to avoid their demolition ; 2