The Building Societies Gazette is the forerunner to Mortgage Finance Gazette and the name was changed in 1991. Delving into the 1929 editions reveals some interesting facts into housing during the decade after the First World War.

There was a severe housing shortage and there were many slums. The political parties had different ideas on what to do about the housing problem, which sounds somewhat familiar to us a century later.

Building societies were flourishing and had been instrumental in the growth of savings especially in the previous 10 years and demand for new houses had exceeded supply since 1919.

The December 1929 edition of the Building Societies Gazette stated: “The public has demanded houses and this created a huge demand for loans on mortgage. Practically, the Building Society was the only organisation properly organised and equipped in every detail to do the financing. Borrowers have flocked to the Societies.”

New mortgage advances by the building societies in 1913 before the war broke out were just over £9 million (£9,131,017). By 1928 new lending had reached almost £59 million (£58,668,762) and during the 10 years from 1919 to 1928 the sum had surpassed £372 million (£372,446,504).

The average mortgage advance was between £400 and £500 on 750,000 houses with the average number of people per household at four. Based on that household size, from 1918 to 1928 around three million people had been housed using building society mortgages. Interest rates in 1928 were around 5.5% but rather higher in London.

Housing in the ‘Good Old Days’

An article in the December 1929 issue of the Gazette entitled Housing in the ‘Good Old Days’ gives a glimpse into earlier housing conditions.

It was based on a speech made by Harold Bellman of Abbey Road Building Society (Abbey National) who became its managing director in 1930 and chairman in 1937. He was knighted in 1932 for services to housing, planning and finance and appointed chairman of the National Association of Building Societies in 1933.

The Gazette stated: “At a mass meeting of men held at Ilford on November 24th, when it is estimated there were some 800 persons present, Mr Harold Bellman spoke on ‘The Good Old Days’.

“There are probably those amongst you who often express grave dissatisfaction with modern housing conditions. It is to be admitted that we have adequate cause for severe criticism, when it is realised that something like three millions of our people to-day live in slumdom. But let us at least be fair and confess that substantial progress has been made towards the healthier housing of the nations in those legendary good old days.

“The conditions of the Victorian era were little to boast about. Statesmen quarrelled over the Reform Bill while indescribable filth accumulated in the streets. As recently as up to 1860, the drainage of the great Metropolis was based upon legislation and methods dating from the reign of Henry VIII. There was then no system of conducting rain water by pipes into a main sewer. In heavy rain the streets were impassable.

“To add to the general discomfort, house refuse was thrown from the windows. Mounds of filth were heaped up in the streets and would be left there stenching for weeks until rain came and washed the contents back into the houses whose entries lay below the street level.

“The sewers that exited in those days emptied themselves into the Thames at low water, their contents being driven back at every rise of the tide, and Londoners derived a great deal of their water supply the same source! Some of the sewers were so constructed that to be of any use at all, the contents would have to flow up hill, but bad as this was, the sewers in question were by no means the worst of the drainage evils. In the earlier years of the Victorian era, there were, for instance, over 270,000 houses in London with cesspools actually beneath them.

“Such conditions remind one of the story of the would-be holiday maker who, noticing an odour at his new lodgings, exclaimed to the landlady, ‘It must be the drains!’ ‘Indeed it isn’t,’ said the landlady, ‘there aren’t any!’”

Housing 1919-1929

Following the First World War, there was a severe housing shortage. The Housing, Town Planning, etc, Act of 1919 was passed, also known as the Addison Act, after the Minister of Health, Dr Christopher Addison.

Dr Addison started off the first programme of council house building, introducing government subsidies and aimed to provide 500,000 ‘homes fit for heroes’ within a three-year period.

However, less than half of this target was met – 213,789 (as referenced in the table below). This was because of large increases in public spending and in 1921 a Cabinet committee decided to halt the housing construction scheme. Addison resigned and became a strong critic of the government.

Housing progress in England and Wales 1919-1929

The December 1929 edition of the Building Societies Gazette shows housing completions over the previous decade

*Public utility societies were a bit like housing associations

Many of the houses built under the Addison Act had three bedrooms with a lounge and scullery (for washing), and maybe a parlour (reception room). Some had two, four or five bedrooms. This was also the first generation of houses to feature electricity, running water, bathrooms, indoor toilets and gardens intended for vegetable growing.

However, until well into the 1930s, some new houses were built with outdoor toilets and did not have a proper bathroom. Instead the bath would be in the kitchen and could double as a work surface.

The housing standards are based on the Tudor Walters Report of 1919, and the design manual written according to the 1913 building standards. Its recommendation set the standards for council house design and location for the next 90 years.

In 1923 the Chamberlain Act was introduced by Neville Chamberlain, who succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1937. The Chamberlain Act withdrew subsidies for council houses but allowed subsidies for private builders. Local authorities could build new houses but had to sell them.

This was reversed a year later by the incoming Labour government. In 1924 John Wheatley was appointed Health Secretary and under the Wheatley Act 1924 higher subsidies were introduced for council housing and also allowed for a contribution to be made from the rates. This was a major period of council house construction and between the war years of 1919 and 1939, local authorities built 1.1 million homes.

The government subsidies amounted to around £1 billion over the decade. The Gazette commented: “The figure is huge and makes one pause to think that timings could have been better managed, particularly in the earlier days following war. The Government could have done better for the country had the machinery of the Building Societies been utilised. Even to-day many eminent men have expressed the opinion that great savings could be made by transferring the loans made by local authorities over to Building Societies, thus cheapening the cost of administration.”

Over the decade from 1919 to 1929, almost 1.4 million private and council houses were built. Some 90 years later, housing is still a problem and over the latest decade, 2009 to 2019, the number of housing completions was 1,530,680. But there is a much bigger population now – some 56 million people in England compared with around 39 million in 1929.