Minutes

Minutes BCC/1/AO/1/1/2 and 7 onwards are indexed. The minutes are handwritten and printed and signed by the committee Chairman. Minute volume BCC/1/AO/1/1/6 is currently missing. The minutes include the printed reports of the Public Works Committee to Council, reports of the Borough Surveyor (later City Surveyor) with regards to the progress of specific projects, details of land purchases and exchanges for public works projects, and reports on the progress of all manner of public works initiatives, such as street lighting, sewerage provision and flood prevention measures, tramway and road building projects, road widening and town planning schemes. Also included in the minutes are accounts and statements of income and expenditure, including costs of individual projects, and other general information relating to resources and staffing (i.e. workmen's wages). The minutes dated 1908 - 1912 include a number of references to the Moor Pool Estate in Harborne, something of an anomaly in the history of housing and town planning in Birmingham prior to the First World War. The estate was built around Ravenhurst Road area of the parish, was set up by J.S. Nettlefold, Chairman of the Council's Housing Department, and run by a private co-operative body known as Harborne Tenants Limited. Although strictly a private body, the written proposal setting out the layout of the estate (as well as the drawn plans) had to be put before Council on 13 October 1908 as it was set up as an experimental 'garden suburb', with street widths narrower than building bye-laws at the time; likewise, although strictly a private body. For more information on the estate see particularly minute books BCC/1/AO/1/1/26 - 29. The minutes of the inter-war years (1918 - 1939) give a large amount of detail on the development of the large municipal housing estates such as Kingstanding and Weoley Castle, as well as the employment utilisation of public works schemes to provide work for the unemployed. The minutes dating from 1945 give a huge amount of information about the post-war reconstruction works, ring road and arterial road schemes and slum and bomb damage clearance works that took place across the city after 1945, particularly in the five redevelopment zones of Bath Row, Gooch Street, Summer Lane, Duddeston and Nechells and Yardley. They also detail the work of the chief architect of the redevelopment works that took place in Birmingham during the 1930s to 1950s, Sir Herbert Manzoni, the City Surveyor and Engineer. The minutes of 17 June 1950 include a report of the Estates Sub-Committee on the proposed construction of prefabricated aluminium bungalows for key workers in Birmingham (see minutes of 26 January 1950, minute 36191 - 36192, in BCC/1/AO/1/1/113).