HEALTH AND EMPLOYMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 71, 23 February 1937, Page 9

HEALTH AND EMPLOYMENT

PROMOTION AT HOME. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Feb. 20. A White Paper is published tonight containing proposals which have emerged from an expert investigation of the working of tlie formula undei which an annual Exchequer grant of £44,000,000 is distributed among local authorities in England and Wales toward the promotion of health. The total of the grant is to be increased .to about £49,000,000, and under a revised formula, which gives special weight to the amount of local unemployment and factors such as sparse population, a larger share of the increased grant will bo allocated to poorer areas, where the need lor social services is usually greatest while they are least able to pay lor them. Revision of the block front system was undertaken on account of the great inequalities of rates prevailing in different localities, these being attributable to the incidence of unemployment and other causes, and frequently resulting in the discouragement of industry in just those areas where its recovery was most importAmong striking examples quoted in the White Paper of the effects of the redistribution is the estimated gain of £51,000 a year to Merthyr Tydvil, a derelict mining village in South Wales, this representing an equivalent of 5s in the pound on local rates. Durham, Glamorgan and Monmouth between them will gain something like £650,000 a year. In London, Bermondsey, a poor borough, will gam the equivalent of more than a shilling rate.