The '''Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919''' (9 & 10 Geo. 5. c. 35) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was also known as the Addison Act after Minister of Health, Christopher Addison, who was Minister for Housing. The Act was passed to allow the building of new houses after the First World War, and marked the start of a long 20th-century tradition of state-owned housing in planned council estates. A separate Act was passed for Scotland.

Background

The 1919 Act followed on from the Town Planning Act 1909 and the 1917 Tudor Walters Committee Report into the provision of housing in the United Kingdom; the latter commissioned by Parliament with a view to postwar construction. In part, it was a response to the shocking lack of fitness amongst many recruits during World War I, which was attributed to poor living conditions. That belief summed up in a housing poster of the period that "you cannot expect to get an A1 population out of C3 homes", in reference to the period's military fitness classifications.

Terms

It provided subsidies to local authorities and aimed to help finance the construction of 500,000 houses within three years. Section 41 (1) provided that the London County Council could build houses outside the County of London. The provision was used to build 'out-county' estates, such as Becontree.

Results

Not all of the funding was ultimately made available, as the subsidies were scrapped in 1922 under the Geddes Axe austerity programme. Only 213,000 homes were built under the 1919 Act scheme.