Drink on Housing Estates .% question of considerable importance—licensed houses
on the new housing estates—was discussed at a Tem- perance Legislation League Conference presided over by Lord Lytton on Tuesday. The aggregate population of the new housing estates throughout the country is inunense and most of the estates are the property of local authorities. Though each authority can do what it chooses about public-houses (subject, of course, to the approval of the licensing justices) it is eminently desirable that general agreement should be reached as to what, all things considered, is . the best arrangement. Public- houses can be vetoed altogether—much to the benefit of existing houses just off the estate ; the inhabitants can be polled on the question ; or houses of a certain standard with disinterested management and disinterested owner- ship (i.e., not ownership by brewers) can be insisted on Altogether this last course seems the best and fairest. If the Home Office, which has been responsible for the Carlisle experiment, could be invited to run public-houses on the new housing estates on Carlisle lines that might be the best arrangement of all.
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