MINISTRY OF INFORMATION .
HOME INTELLIGENCE .
Daily Statement of Facts No. 10. London, October 23rd, 1940 .

RENTS AND EVACUATION .

Some Secretaries of Local Committees and Islington Housing Manager say evacuation being held up as good tenants find they have more commitments to meet if mother and children live in country while husband keeps on house in London: problem of supervising adolescents prevents many mothers from going away.

NOTE : There is need of clarifying the position about liability for rent where persons are evacuated under the Government scheme of assistance for women with children, old and infirm persons etc. who have relations or friends in a reception or neutral area. May they renounce their tenancy in those conditions, although they have not been made homeless by enemy action?

The Clerk to the Middlesex County Council raises the question of the position of house owners who are willing to hand over their premises which are temporarily unoccupied, either to the Local Authority or to a homeless person at a low rent, but fear to do so because of the application of the Restriction of Rents legislation, which might stand in the way of their recovering the use of the property when required and letting it at an appropriate rent.

EVACUATION OF AGED & INFIRM .

Numbers of old and infirm people wishing to leave London, but unable because they have no address to which to go, reported as follows:-

SHELTERS .

Islington and Paddington Housing Estates Managers report brick surface shelters not being used; trench shelters damp. Bethnal Green social worker says trench shelters ooze with water. The same is true in many other districts.

CIVIL DEFENCE .

Secretary, Yiewsley & West Drayton Local Committee and Mitcham C.A.B. and Paddington Housing Manager report ungenerous treatment meted out to civil defence workers injured in course of their duties. Pay is cut when men are in hospital (after a fortnight), leaving families little to live on; this compares unfavourably with treatment of soldiers' families..