| Description | Some minutes indexed. The minutes are printed and signed by the committee chairman. The minutes are in the appropriately dated combined sub-committee minute volumes (see BCC/1/AM/26/1). The minutes include details on applicants on the Corporation Housing Register (mostly summary information) for parlour and non-parlour type accommodation on the municipal estates. These include application number, whether the applicants had children, date of application and the name of the estate in question. There are also detailed lists of applicants who required consideration, including name (usually male head of household), numbers of children, date of first application, present accommodation, rent paid, details of case type (i.e. present accommodation overcrowded), and the committee's decision. There is additional summary information on total number of applications accepted and rejected for each week, total number of applications revised and other related information; and reports on borderline cases of tenants suspected by Health Visitors of not keeping their Council homes in a proper state of cleanliness. The minutes and reports provide a rich source of quantitative and qualitative data relevant to the history of social welfare and housing, particularly during the inter-war years. The minutes can be used to establish the scale of the various housing crises that the Council was forced to deal with throughout the twentieth century, how long certain individuals and families, some of which were large, were forced to endure substandard accommodation. |