C O N T E X T 1 7 2 : J U N E 2 0 2 2 19 REGULATIONS AND CODES to the London Building Act and the model bye-laws.’ If the author had meant that the overcrowding was due to the success of the byelaws in greatly extending life expectancy, they would have been right. But this was not the argument. The author asserted: ‘the bye-laws lead to overcrowding by needlessly increasing the expense of building’. In the 21st century the cost argument has been deployed in response to any requirement to improve the energy performance of buildings: more expensive construction means that, at a time of housing shortage, fewer houses will be built.Was the motive of the author one of serving the underhoused poor, or the interests of wealthy landowners wishing to provide accommodation for their labourers in the cheapest possible manner, while maximising their own profits? There were also the usual complaints that the ‘pettifogging bureaucracy’ of the operation of the ‘stupid’ byelaws ‘adds unnecessarily to the number of officials, who, of course, have to be paid out of the rates’. Despite these assaults, the byelaws made progress. But while they succeeded in easing many of the public health problems of Victorian England, they could not combat poor diet and smoke, smog and air pollution, which still meant that a substantial proportion of the population was underweight or deformed by rickets. During the 19th century a number of social reformers had campaigned for healthier, leafier lifestyles for the poor. Model settlements such as Saltaire or Bourneville demonstrated the possibilities, with a balance of houses, parks, allotments, schools and churches. These things were outside the scope of the model byelaws, which focused on small-scale detail. One can not create a town merely by controlling buildings, sewers and the width of streets. The answer was the introduction of the planning system with the Housing, Town Planning etc Act 1909. This enabled local authorities, on application to the Local Government Board, to create town-planning schemes. The act established planning and building control as separate species of legislation, and as functions that would come to be administered by separate professions. The act permitted local authorities to vary the byelaws through town planning schemes approved by the Local Government Board. The overlap or tension between building regulations and planning continues to this day. The Local Government Board was abolished in 1919, some of its key responsibilities being subsumed by the Ministry of Health. In that year Parliament passed the Housing Act (also called the Addison Act, associated with ‘homes fit for heroes’) and the government published its Manual on the Preparation of State-funded Housing Schemes. This advocated tree-lined The 15th-century Smallhythe Place, Kent: jettying, close studding and weatherboarding are features at odds with the model byelaws.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=