Catalogue description Records of the Unemployment Grants Committee

The Unemployment Grants Committee was set up on 20 December 1920 under Viscount St Davids, to assist local authorities in the United Kingdom in carrying out approved public works schemes other than work on roads or on housing schemes. The committee was appointed by Treasury minute under the Unemployment Relief Works Act 1920 to supervise the administration of central government grants in aid to local authorities who wished to generate relief work in their area.

Regulations were laid down specifying the nature of the work that would receive approval, the areas in which the scheme would apply, the authorities which could claim the grants and the period of time for which money would be available. Initially intended to be temporary, the regulations underwent a variety of changes during the inter-war period as the problem of unemployment proved to be more obdurate than had originally been supposed, and as a result the work of the committee frequently came under the scrutiny of various Cabinet committees on unemployment and of the Treasury.

Initially, the Unemployment Grants Committee was responsible to the Treasury but worked under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Health (although the Ministry of Labour had to certify that serious unemployment existed in those areas applying for grants) whose vote covered its expenses until 31 August 1929.

In 1929 the Unemployment Grants Committee was reconstituted and brought under the authority of the Ministry of Labour. It was given statutory powers under Part II of the the Development (Loan Guarantees and Grants) Act 1929.

In 1931, the report of the National Expenditure Committee (May Committee) recommended severe curtailment of the Unemployment Grants Committee's activities, and in December 1931 it was decided that no further applications for grant aid would be admitted. The following year, the 1929 Act was allowed to lapse and the Unemployment Grants Committee met for the last time on 31 August 1932. Thereafter, supervision of the remaining schemes came under the ministry itself. The Unemployment Grants Committee was formally abolished in 1950.