ENG-1957 — Page 36

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REVIEW

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To help its own employees, the Government launched a project to encourage local civil servants on the pensionable establishment to form co-operative housing societies to which land would be offered at half the upset price and loans made on easy terms. The scheme evoked a brisk response and the building of the first block of civil servants' flats began at Belcher Gardens in 1954. The bigger and more enlightened firms in the Colony also built blocks of flats for their em- ployees, and some of the factories, particularly the new textile mills, erected dormitories on their premises.

By 1955 the economic depression which had followed the trade embargo appeared to have come to an end and the graph of trade figures was showing a healthy upward movement. Between 1953 and 1955 the Colony's economy had adjusted itself remarkably well to a lower level of entrepôt trade and had largely compensated the deficit by a switch to manufacturing industries. Now, with trade revived and with industralization progressing, there was a new build- ing boom. Investment in private building, which had been just over $95,000,000 in 1954, climbed to a new record of $148,000,000 in 1955-a record which was consecutively broken with totals of nearly $163,000,000 in 1956 and $175,000,000 in 1957.

A contributory influence in the spate of new building was undoubtedly the new Buildings Ordinance of 1955. Apart from regulating comprehensively every aspect of the building industry, one important provision of this Ordinance permits the erection of buildings as high as twice the width of the street instead of to the former general limit of from one to 1 times the width. The new buildings, with lower ceilings and more storeys to a given height, yield higher returns and are therefore a more attractive proposition to the investor.

Also in 1955, the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, to which reference has already been made, was amended to permit compensation to opponents (the tenants) in proceedings for