HOUSES FOR £300

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 7, 8 July 1922, Page 12

HOUSES FOR £300

RETURN TO ECONOMIC BUILDING.

Tenders live been approved by the British Ministry of Health for the erection of a group of houses at Nottingham at the figure of £298 17s 7d per house. These houses provide all the accommodation required by the Ministry in..the! non-parlour type of house, that is to say, living-room, scullery, bathroom, ferder, lavatory, and coalhouse, to- ! gether with three bedrooms and ample cupboard accommodation. The import-: ant feature about the Nottingham scheme is .that, adding the cost of the land, roads, and sewers, the "all-in price" for these.houses will be £349 3s 7d per house. A year ago the possibility of obtaining in a very short time an economic house prophesied by Sir Charles Rnthen, the Director-General of Housing of the Ministry of Health, peared to be very remote, but since the change in the methods adopted by the Ministry it has been realised—and figures month by month havo conclusively proved—that the economic house would very soon be possible of attainment.

"The average cost throughout the country in - April last year,- said Sir Charles Ritthen, in an interview, with. a p^ess representative recently, '.'were for the parlour-type house £816, and for the non-parlour type £685. < In September of the same year the average prices were £659 and £594. During the last few months tenders at £40, and even less, for the non : parlour type have been fairly common, and for £450 and under for the parlour-type. Notwithstanding' .these apparently exceptionally low figures, consistent pressure has been applied by the Ministry, who have been determined to' obtain t_e:_ max'mum value for the minimum of cost. In view of the. fairly considerable fall in wages, the undoubted heavy -increase in the output of the pperatives, and the consistent and considerable fall in the prices of material, a still more rapid and considerble drop-in..;,the;, cost of house-building has been expected, and there" is little doubt that we are certain in a very .few weeks or months of a return of private enterprise and economic house-building. . To the city of Nottingham, with the, assistance of its capable officials, must be given the/honour, of producing . the .cheapest,' yet artistic, scheme since the inception of the great State-aided housing scheme."