PART V Provision of housing accommodation

Special provisions for rural districts

118 Minister's power to assist rural district councils by acquiring land and erecting houses
(1) With a view to assisting rural district councils in the preparation and carrying out of schemes for the provision of dwelling accommodation in the agricultural parishes of their districts to meet the needs of agricultural workers and persons whose incomes are, in the opinion of the council concerned, such that they would not ordinarily pay rents in excess of those paid by agricultural workers in the council's district, the Minister, if he is requested by any such council so to do and is satisfied—
(a) that their financial resources are insufficient, and
(b) that the council of the county is unwilling to give assistance to them under the last foregoing section,
may, with the consent of the Treasury, acquire land and erect houses on behalf and at the expense of that council, and for that purpose may exercise any powers which under this Act the council may exercise in regard to the acquisition of land and the erection of houses, or may make arrangements with any other Government department for the exercise by that Department of any of those powers which, in his opinion, could more conveniently be so exercised.
(2) For the purposes of this section a house shall be deemed to be situated in an agricultural parish if—
(a) the net annual value of the agricultural land in the parish in which the house is situate as appearing in the valuation list in force on the first day of April, nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, exceeded 25 per cent. of the total net annual value of that parish as appearing in the said list, and
(b) the population of the parish, according to the latest census return of the Registrar-General, is less than fifty persons per hundred acres.
(3) For the purposes of the last foregoing subsection the expression " agricultural land " has the meaning assigned to it by subsection (2) of section two of the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act, 1928, and in the case of any hereditament occupied by or on behalf of the Crown for public purposes, the value directed by subsection (3) of section sixty-four of the Rating and Valuation Act, 1925, to be entered in the valuation list as respects the rateable value of that hereditament shall be taken as being in the case of agricultural land fifty per cent. of the net annual value of the hereditament and in any other case the net annual value thereof.
(4) Any question whether a parish is or is not an agricultural parish within the meaning of this section shall be determined by the Minister whose decision shall be final.