Summary.
Although this thesis has centred on the London suburbs there is no reason to believe that the findings were not echoed in other parts of the United Kingdom. Banks were prepared to advance money to builders who wished to build homes near factories anywhere in the country. The building societies were widely represented throughout the country and it was easy for them to advance monies to buyers anywhere in England. Where there were opportunities for working-class homes to be built at a profit the builders would build them and the societies would make the advances.
The objective of the work by Swenarton and Taylor was to determine the proportion of owner-occupied houses in the country in 1914 and 1939 and to look at their social distribution. For this they used various sources but they laid emphasis on the Ministry of Labours Report in 1931 on wage levels and the Report to the Inter-Departmental Committee for Rates in 1939 which gave details of the size and number of homes in the country. The 1939 report shows that by far the largest number of houses built were small homes but the rateable value bands used were too wide to differentiate between the various types of house built, i.e. very small houses or medium sized homes. Using wage levels from the 1931 report, which excluded a large section of wage earners, figures are produced to show that only 10 per cent earned more than £3 5s per week. When this level of earnings of a part of the employed population in 1931 is compared with the probable price of houses in 1939 it is argued that only 10 per cent of the lower paid were theoretically in the position to buy a home in 1939. Wage levels in 1931 were lower than in 1939 and many of those excluded from the schedule were buying houses. The evidence from the builders, the building societies and the purchasers shows clearly that people on low earnings, even as low as £2.15s 6d on the schedule for the Borough of Surbiton, were buying homes. As there were more small houses built and as they were being bought by the lower paid it can be argued that by 1939 more members of the lower-paid and those in the working-classes became home owners than did members of the middle classes.
On the question of the proportions of home ownership which existed in 1914 it is clear that there is no clear evidence to support a figure of 10 per cent which was widely used. In 1939 it is probable that the figure was in the region of 25 per cent as argued by Swenarton and Taylor. |
