Britain: An official handbook > 1977

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
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design and greater use of labour-saving equipment and materials have com¬
bined to lighten the burden of housework. Some nine households in ten
have a vacuum cleaner, more than two in three a washing machine, over four
out of five a refrigerator, one in three an electric food mixer and nearly all an
electric iron. An increasing, but still comparatively small, number have a
dish-washing machine, deep freeze and tumble drier. Very few households
employ any regular paid help and hardly any have a resident servant. Some
households get help through the local authority home help service because
of particular need, for example, if there is an invalid or elderly person in the
house or because the mother is having her baby at home. People in full-time
work benefit from launderettes with extended opening hours and from the fact
that some shops stay open later, at least one evening a week.
Over half of all families now own their own homes, though half of these home
owners still have further repayments of mortgages to make. Most of the other
households rent an unfurnished house or flat either from a local authority
(an increasing trend) or from a private landlord (a falling trend). People in
unskilled manual jobs are more likely to live in rented accommodation,
particularly local authority housing, than people in non-manual occupations.
Though many people, perhaps 20 per cent of all heads of households, seem to
stay nearly all their lives in the house into which they moved on marriage, there
are always a number of individuals and whole families (perhaps between 6
and 9 per cent of families each year) changing their homes for a variety of
reasons. Much of this movement is to another house in the same or neighbouring
area, but there are certain broad patterns of movement, for example, the drift
away from very remote rural areas and from the centres of large towns towards
suburbs and rural areas accessible to towns, and the movement of people on
retirement to the country and seaside.
An important influence on the planning of housing and services has been the
growth of car ownership. New housing estates are often some distance from
public transport and from work places, schools and the main shops.
Some 55 per cent of households now own cars (70 per cent in country areas).
In the mid-1950s public transport was more significant than private motoring,
but now private motoring, measured in terms of distance travelled by passengers,
is nearly four times as important as public transport. The volume of public
transport services has not fallen as much as the use of them; indeed, many
inter-city rail services have become more frequent over the last ten years.
In urban areas, in spite of heavy falls in use, bus services have been broadly
maintained. Services in rural areas, however, have been sharply reduced.
Very great benefits are conferred on families and individuals by the growth of
car ownership, but this trend has serious implications for the public transport
system. The problems of those without access to a car, many of whom are among
the poorer sections of the community or are elderly or infirm, are being given
particular attention in the development of transport policies.
The spread of car ownership has also influenced large-scale urban recon¬
struction and road development programmes of the last 20 years. Some towns
and cities have been altered to accommodate more traffic and house more
people; many town centres have pedestrian precincts; by-passes help to reduce
traffic in city centres.
In modern industrial society in a densely populated country there is much
scope for conflict between the need for communal facilities and the desire to
preserve existing beauty or places of historic interest, and between potential
users of a new service and people whose way of life is threatened by the need to
accommodate it. As a result the activities of the established amenity societies,