On Friday week Dr. Addison, as the Minister in charge,
opened the debate in the House of Commons on Housing in a very long speech. He said that he was in no apologetic humour, and denied that the GoVernment housing scheme had failed. "It was true that the actual building of houses had been trivial," but the Department had been obliged to spend the first four months of the year in preparing the general scheme. Then the standard size of cottage had to be decided upon, and the Department had to prepare their manual, schemes for the economical construction of by-roads, and a standard form of building contract for the use of local bodies. " All this pre- liminary spadework was inevitable and took a long time." Then they had inquired into new methods of building, and they had made provision for setting building bylaws aside when neces- sary. " That work had of course occupied much time?" Among such a mass of authorities there had been cases of delay which could have been avoided. Certain of the delays were really
inevitable. All that he as Minister could do was to see that as soon as attention was called to theme matters were put right.
Previous page
