5 NOVEMBER 1927, Page 16

WESTMINSTER HOUSING [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In view

of the Westminster City Council's comments upon the Westminster Survey Group we think it will interest your readers to know that we recently pointed out to the Town Clerk sixty houses in the Victoria Ward which required attention. The practical result is that the whole sixty have been thoroughly repaired and this is by no means the only result obtained by the Survey.

Admiral Bruce says he does not kno* whether Mrs. Barclay and Miss Perry are " trained investigators." They are both members of the Surveyors' Institution and their firm has had ample practical experience of this class of work in several London boroughs.

It is, therefore, unnecessary for Admiral Bruce to feel any uneasiness on the point.

We are glad to note that none of the facts revealed by the Survey are disproved or, indeed, specifically denied in the Council's reply. We think it, however, unfortunate that in a pamphlet published presumably at the expense of West- minster ratepayers, the Westminster City Council should have permitted itself to attack certain of its ratepayers by name and to charge them by implication with having dis- possessed poor persons from their houses in order to rebuild, or recondition, these houses for their own use. So far as the four members of the Survey Group included in this charge are concerned, we are able to state that this charge is quite untrue.—We are, Sir, &c.,