Old folk who want to stay in old houses
We must all welcome any reminder that those who serve on our local government authorities are human – and that goes for the paid officials as well as the honorary members.

Some further clearance of old housing property is due in the town, according to all modern concepts of health and hygiene but the council stays its hand, having first reflected that a lot of replacement will be needed and secondly that some of the old people can’t bear to be uprooted.

This very point was mentioned by Dr. Bermingham at the September meeting of the Rushden Urban Council and was underlined as presenting a difficult problem for the authorities.

Surely, however, the question of providing the right kind of new accommodation is the only one that really matters. To defer demolitions because old people are living in some of the property may defeat the whole campaign, because the process of growing old is continuous.

Of course, you could empty those scheduled houses where the occupants are not yet old, but in that case you will have a few veterans living in a largely deserted and tumbledown neighbourhood – a very poor kind of existence.

I should think that the homes soon to be built by Rushden council on the lately cleared area between Little Street and Park Road are the answer to the sentimental difficulty. They will belong to the “old” Rushden, offering a familiar outlook and – being for veterans only – a chance of living close to people one knows. The shock of going to a new estate which might as well be a different town will be avoided.

If Rushden can do this kind of thing we need not doubt that Higham, which has already put stone-built council houses bang into its High Street, can do equally well.