latrines and a communal open space for washing clothes on the cross- piece. Access to rooms was by balconies running round the four sides of each wing on every floor, the buildings being entered by four staircases, one at each corner.
50. After these buildings were completed and occupied, they were subjected to careful scrutiny in order to determine what improvements in design should be made in the light of experience. The decision was that future buildings could reasonably be of seven storeys instead of six, and should have flat roofs strengthened and fenced so that they might add to the recreational space. Another improvement was the provision of communal bath-rooms on the scale of one to about 35 domestic rooms. A further modification was the conversion of a number of ground floor rooms into shops or workshops measuring 120 or 240 square feet in which those squatters who had shops or workshops before being resettled could continue in business. Some of the later blocks built from 1961 onwards also have shop-rooms of 155 and 310 square feet. At the end of the year 5,239 ground-floor rooms in all estates were let as shops and 974 as workshops. Of the shops, 664 bays were used for restaurants, 300 for the sale of fresh provisions, meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, 36 for selling roast meat, and the remainder for other trades. The ground-floor workshops house a wide variety of small enterprises, while settlers are also allowed to carry on certain simple cottage industries in upper-floor domestic rooms. Plans of typical multi-storey buildings (Marks I to III) will be found at Appendices IV to VI.
51. In the eleven years that have elapsed since the first six storey blocks were built at Shek Kip Mei, the Public Works Department has constructed 115 resettlement blocks to the initial 'H' type design and an additional 31 'I' type blocks designed to make use of smaller sites. A modification introduced in 1961 altered the external appearance of the design very considerably, especially when viewed from the ends, whilst not affecting the layout or number of the internal rooms. The ends of the arms of the 'H' blocks were connected by a hollow block concrete screen, and additional rooms of a new and enlarged size, each with its individual balcony, were provided. Since the introduction of this amended design, known as Mark II, 94 of these blocks have been built and the last one was completed in October 1964 at Tung Tau Estate.
52. One striking feature of the resettlement programme has been the speed with which blocks have been planned and constructed. This began
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