The Manawatu Daily Times Britain’s Five-Year Plan

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7300, 30 October 1933, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times Britain’s Five-Year Plan

Britain is on the point of launching her live-year plan of housing reconstruction. Last April, the Ministry of Health requested local authorities to draw up plans which should have as their objective the complete elimination of all slums within five years. The response has been less hearty than was hoped. England has 1717 housing authorities, and of these no more than 50 have sent in definite programmes. However, these include some of the largest areas in the country, and in addition it is understood that many other centres will submit schemes in the near future. When the problem is regarded in the proper perspective, the outlook seems definitely encouraging. Nottingham, for example, estimates that the last vestiges of slums within its boundaries will have disappeared by 1938. Hull proposes by that date to have removed 3210 houses considered unlit for human habitation. Stoke-on-Trent is to destroy 3751 houses, and find accommodation for the 18,619 people living in them. Chester expects to remove 1500 houses, although its total population is only about 40,000. Portsmouth is to account for 1300 houses, and Sunderland for 1290. Thus, live towns, none of them very large, propose among them, within the next five years, to rehouse the inhabitants of more than 11,000 slum dwellings. Some of the larger towns whose rehousing plans do not err on the side of ambition to give the least cause for satisfaction, it was in these areas that the sins of the industrial revolution were deepest ; and consequently it is they that have the hardest problems to tackle. Leeds, for example, is said to have 33,000 back-to-back houses that need demolition. The situation also in Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and other similar places is extremely bad. Leeds gallantly expects to demolish slums at the rate of 3000 a year, but Sheffield and Birmingham aspire only to remove between 4000 and 5.000 houses within the whole five-year period. The difficulties facing some of these cities arc doubtless great; they have a large unemployment roll and their finances are low. But it is not yet too late for their present plans to be revised. The high intention that their city boundaries shall include only such things as are lovely and of good report is a banner beneath which England may well march to victory in her battle with the slums.