The Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 is an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

(7 & 8 Geo. VI c. 36) which was passed in order to provide solutions to the housing crisis which occurred at the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The Act was the responsibility of the

Ministry of Reconstruction The Ministry of Reconstruction was a department of the United Kingdom government which existed after both World War I and World War II in order to provide for the needs of the population in the post war years. World War I The Ministry of Recons ...

, and came in response to the recommendations of the

Burt Committee The Burt Committee was a working party set up by the government of the United Kingdom during World War II to provide guidance on the housing shortage. The committee had the correct title of the ''Interdepartmental Committee on House Construction'' ...

, which had been established in 1942. The Government aimed to provide enough homes for each family who required an individual dwelling, which it perceived had been the situation in 1939 prior to the outbreak of war. However,

the Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

had rendered some 450,000 homes either completely destroyed or uninhabitable. A secondary intention of the act was the completion of the pre-war

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

project. The Act provided for a number of strategies to solve the housing crisis: * An increase in the labour force of the building industry to pre-war levels of over 1 million * The construction of at least 300,000 homes during the two-year period after the act, under the

Emergency Factory Made Prefabs (prefabricated homes) were a major part of the delivery plan to address the United Kingdom's post–Second World War housing shortage. They were envisaged by war-time prime minister Winston Churchill in March 1944, and legally outlined in ...

programme * To prevent price inflation caused by high demand on building services * To subsidise privately built houses * To provide for the construction of temporary,

prefabricated housing Prefabricated homes, often referred to as prefab homes or simply prefabs, are specialist dwelling types of prefabricated building, which are manufactured off-site in advance, usually in standard sections that can be easily shipped and assembled. ...

A budget of £150 million was committed to the project.

Sources

Abstract of the Housing Act 1944
{{Housing in the United Kingdom United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1944 Housing in the United Kingdom United Kingdom home front during World War II Welfare state in the United Kingdom

See also

Sources