Catalogue description Ministry of Health: Unemployment Relief in Special Areas, Registered Files

The Ministry of Health was concerned with the problems of depressed areas and unemployment in so far as they affected the administration of local government, public assistance and medical services. Primary responsibility for problems associated with unemployment, including those of the depressed or 'special' areas, rested with the Ministry of Labour, to which the commissioner for special areas in England and Wales, appointed in 1934, was responsible. The commissioner was charged with assisting other government departments, and the Ministry of Health worked closely with the commissioner's staff to secure the provision of adequate medical services, to encourage hospital building and to alleviate problems of local administration.

The ministry was also concerned in the administration of the Hollesley Bay Colony, a farming enterprise in Suffolk designed to train unemployed workmen as agricultural labourers. It was managed by the Central (Unemployed) Body for London, an organisation set up under the Unemployed Workmen Act 1905. In 1930 the colony and the central body were dissolved and their assets passed to the London County Council.

The series comprises registered files, taken over from the Ministry of Health, of departmental correspondence dealing with legislation, financial questions, commissions and committees relating to schemes of unemployment relief in the "special areas" as defined in the First Schedule to the 1934 Special Areas Act. In brief these special areas were the Tyneside area of Northumberland, practically all the administrative county of Durham, certain districts in Cumberland and most of South Wales.