4

THE NEW TOWNS

of 21 August, 1954, by Dr. Stephen Taylor) showed that about half the
families. had weekly earnings of £10 a week or less. They were asked this
question: ‘Bearing in mind building costs and the housing you get, do you
feel that your rent is reasonable or unreasonable? ’

Rent 10s. to 20s. 20s. to 30s. 30s. to 435s.
Reasonable .. 96 51 32 per cent.
Unreasonable .. 1 43 54 »
No opinion we 3 6 14 i”

Without knowing the distribution of this sample, we cannot tell what
proportion of it consisted of the low-rent tenants, of whom 96 per cent. were
satisfied. But it should be pointed out that, for almost all the New Towns,
only the last two columns are significant, since hardly any New Town
house rents for under one pound a week. It then appears that more than
half the new tenants believed that their rent was unreasonable.
A second question reinforces this conclusion. When asked whether
there was anything else that they would have liked added to the house ‘for
which you would be willing to pay extra rent,’ less than a quarter of the
households with rents above one pound a week were willing to pay more
for anything.
There is a further relevant point here. As a high proportion of incoming
 residents are in the early years of married life, domestic expenditure is
at its peak, with the purchase of furniture and the arrival of two or three
babies within a space of five or six years. The children, moreover, tie the
mother to the home and prevent her from becoming an additional earner.
(The same survey showed that more than a third of the families in ‘ Silkin
Newton ’ were paying hire-purchase instalments, against a national average
of a quarter. A survey confined to newcomers would probably show an
even higher proportion.) This means that, rent apart, there are heavy claims
on the family income that can often be met only by overtime. It also means
that it will be very difficult to persuade employees of public utilities and the
distributive trades, where wage rates are lower than in industry, to take up
residence in New Town houses.

Financing Amenities
The financial structure of the Corporations has meant, in a period of
rising interest rates and construction costs, a continual pressure to economise.
And though this pressure has been resisted, it has naturally limited or delayed
the provision of amenities. Yet there is a more serious handicap that is
due to the Minister's strict interpretation of Clause 12 (7) of the 1946 Act.
This states that any proposals for amenity construction ‘shall be approved
by the Minister with the concurrence of the Treasury as being likely to secure
for the Corporation a return which is reasonable having regard to all the
circumstances, when compared to the cost of carrying out those proposals.’
This means, as the Minister has interpreted it, that they must be able to
meet both capital and interest charges.