What to do if your
house is bombed
If your house of business
premises have been bombed, the expense in temporary repairs to which
you may already have been put will be repaid, and as soon as is
practicable the damaged property will be reinstated. At the
end of the war an appropriate payment will be made in respect of the
building which has been so badly "blitzed" that it can only be
regarded as totally destroyed.
That, in short, is the purpose of
the War Damage Act, and it should be made clear at once that the War
Damage Commission which has been set up is concerned only with that
part of the measure which relates to land and buildings.
A claim may be made for payment
under the Act for any damage caused to land or buildings which is
the result of action by or against the enemy. The alternative
"against" should be noted.
With regard to making the claim,
any person who is interested in the house, whether as freeholder,
mortgagee, lease-holder for seven years or more, may be entitled to
a payment from the Commission, and has a right to apply for it on
the Form V.O.W. 1, to be obtained from the District Valuer for their
Inland Revenue area. These people need take no further action
for the moment.
The next move
The next move is with the Commission. The house may have been
so slightly damaged that the expenditure of £5 would put it right.
Below that sum a claim cannot be entertained, although where there
have been two cases of damage to the same premises or damage to two
houses in the same ownership and in the same local government area,
the cost of making them both good, if it is £5 or over, will be
repaid. Generally speaking, payments under the Act will rank
themselves into three categories - a temporary works payment, a cost
of works payment or a value payment.
Protective
measures are provided for by the temporary works payment. The
money goes to whoever has already paid for, or made himself liable
for, the cost of such work. Any debt to the local authority
which has been incurred in connection with such "first aid" is
automatically wiped out.
Calculating value
payment
When the times
comes for doing the larger repairs necessary for reinstatement, the
Commission will foot the bill for the proper cost of doing the job.
There remains the
third type of payment, the value payment. Now, because there
had to be some mean standard of worth which the Commission could
apply generally, the value of every house and building is taken as
being the sum it would have fetched in the open market at March 31,
1939. The value payment is calculated in this way:- The
market value of the building and the site was at March 31, 1939,
£1,000. After the damage the value of the site is, say, £200.
The land remains, and is still yours. Therefore the appropriate
value payment is £800. In all probability the £800 will not
be paid until the end of the war, but it will have added to it each
year interest at the rate of 2½ per cent, and this will be handed
over also.
