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regard to the alterations made by this statute it was considered advisable to
appoint a Special Committee to deal with the bye-laws regulating the
business and proceedings of the Board at its Meetings and in Committee,
and it is anticipated early in the ensuing year a more extensive and satisfactory
set of bye-laws will be adopted.
Another equally important measure received careful consideration, as it
had in the last preceding year, at the hands of the Board, viz., the
Equalization of Rates Bill, This Bill was again not approved by the
Board, who presented a Petition to Parliament in opposition, praying that
the same should not become law, this course was taken by other District
Boards and Vestries, notwithstanding which it passed through Parliament
and came into force on the 25th day of August last, with the result that the
district has to make a considerable contribution to the Equalization Fund
without receiving any apparent benefit in return.
The Board considered it advisable to present a petition to the Local
Government Board with a view to obtaining an alteration in the law relating
to the powers of water companies, especially directed to the fact that such
companies now possess a power of cutting off the water supply from
dwellinghouses without notice to the Local Sanitary Authority having been
first given. The Board considered the absence of a supply of water the
cause of many evils and a source of risk to the inhabitants of the district,
and, therefore, in this petition made strong representations to the Local
Government Board that the arbitrary powers now possessed by the water
companies should be so controlled that the action now so frequently
exercised should not be brought into force without the consent of the Local
Sanitary Authorities being first obtained, and that, in the opinion of the
Board, the said companies were amply protected by the right they now have
of recovering their rates by distress and the enforcement of penalties.
On the 7th of August last, the report of the Royal Commission appointed
to consider the proper conditions under which the amalgamation of the
City and the County of London can be effected was presented to Parliament.
This report was duly brought to the notice of the Board, but the Board has
not, up to the present time, thought it necessary or expedient to take such
report into consideration, or to take any action thereon.
So far as legal proceedings are concerned, the Board has, fortunately,
not been extensively occupied in this respect. Apart from proceedings
from time to time necessarily adopted for the suppression of nuisances
under the Public Health (London) Act, only two cases of importance have
been recently engaged in by the Board.