| Description | Minute volumes indexed. The minutes are handwritten and printed and signed by the committee Chairman. Many of the minutes that deal with the municipal housing improvements of the early 1900s read as a list of unfit properties, although there may be some detailed discussion of properties that have been declared unfit for habitation. On occasions some enclosed plans provided even copy photographs included in the committee reports of houses ‘before and after’ being made fit for habitation. There are also the printed reports of the Housing Committee as presented to Council and copies of government legislation, housing acts and statutory rules governing house inspections and the like, accounts and statements of annual income and expenditure, and related correspondence and papers. The minutes refer mainly to the slum districts of central Birmingham rather than the newer 'working class suburbs' in areas like Bournbrook, which had only just begun to develop in order to provide better quality, terraced working class housing, and did not begin to be condemned as overcrowded and inadequate until around the mid-twentieth century. There are also detailed transcripts of meetings between municipal officials and building contractors, landowners and other members of the private sector with an interest in municipal house building schemes that show some of the tensions between these groups and the difficulties the Council had in simultaneously obtaining land and property at a reasonable price for house building and appeasing those same ratepayers by ensuring they were properly compensated for their financial sacrifices. The minutes tackle much the same areas of public health and housing provision as the minutes of the Improvement Committee and its sub-committees (see BCC/1/AX), with similar powers, and can be seen as the natural sector to that committee, albeit with jurisdiction over a wider area of central Birmingham than that covered by the Improvement Scheme of 1875. The minutes of the meeting of 8 February 1911 also include a printed report detailing the historical background that led to the appointment of the Housing Committee in 1901 (see minute 3436 in BCC/1/BF/1/1/4). |