WAR ON SLUMS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 290, 2 September 1933, Page 7

WAR ON SLUMS

Clearance in Liverpool BIG PLANS IN BRITAIN Ministry Demands Action (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, August 31. A slum clearance scheme, estimated to cost £7,400,000, was to-day approved by the Liverpool Corpora'.ion Housing Committee. The scheme includes the demolition of 12,742 slum houses and the erection in their place of 15,69houses to accommodate 40,600 people. Building operations, which will extend 'er several years, will alone employ IGOO men. The scheme is to be submitted fcv approval to the Minister of Health, who called upon all local authorities affected to produce, by the end of September, five-year schemes for definite elimination of the slum evil. Many ■schemes already had been submitted and are receiving the consideration of the Ministry. A few have been judged insufficiently drastic and have been returned to the local authorities for prompt amendment. Numerous progressive boroughs have already freed themselves of the shim evil, but in other instances local difficulties have been encountered which will be swept aside in the campaign now bing undertaken by the Health Ministry. Several London boroughs haveshown notable zeal in tackling the problem inherited from past days, when conditions of housing, out of keeping with modern ideas of sanitation, were considered quite normal. Bermondsey, for ’ instance, where a few years ago whole areas consisted of hovels of the worst type, has replaced these by pleasant flats equipped with baths, airy rooms, kitchens and electric light. Bermondsey Is mainly inhabited by riverside workers and is entirely a poor area. But the manner in which those, who were previously, slum dwellers have responded to the opportunity of living in better surroundings is a complete answer to the sceptics who doubted the social effect of good hopsing conditions? . ,