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188
as formulated in the report of the Committee. Certainly your Vestry
would be the last body to enter objection to this part of the scheme,
which is in practical agreement with the views formulated many years
ago—and as above set out—and which would have been carried into
practice had the necessary legal powers, for which application was
made, been given. But it is to be hoped, should the Council adopt
the suggestion of the Committee in regard to the acquisition of
power to make bye-laws, that they will not adopt the opinion of
the Committee 'that the Central Metropolitan Authority rather
than the Local Sanitary Authority should have charge of the bakehouses
of London.' The precedent of the Public Heath (London)
Act, 1891, is in point: the Council should be empowered to make
bye-laws, but the duty of enforcing the bye-laws should rest with
the Local Sanitary Authority."
A copy of the above report was sent to every member
of the Council, June 25th, the day preceding that on which
the proposals contained in the report of the Public Health
and Housing Committee were to be considered. To this
report an amendment was moved to the effect—
" That the Council, while concurring in the view that regulations governing
the position, structure, and internal arrangements of bakehouses should
be made by the Council for the whole of London, is of opinion that the
licensing and supervision of bakehouses, and the duty of enforcing the
Council's regulations, should rest upon the local sanitary authorities (the
CDuncil having power to act on their default under section 100 of the
Public Health (London) Act, and accordingly refers the matter back to
the Committee with instructions to communicate with the President of the
Local Government Board, and to ask him to propose an amendment of the
law for the purpose."
The amendment was adopted. But at the meeting of
the Council, held on July 17th, the Public Health and
Housing Committee submitted a further report as follows :—
" We have again carefully considered the question, and we think with the
Council that it would be well for the supervision of bakehouses and the
enforcement of the regulations to rest upon the local sanitary authorities ;
but we are still strongly of opinion that the Council should be the licensing
authority, as well as the authority to make regulations. We cannot consider
that it would be at all satisfactory for the licensing of bakehouses in
London to be in the hands of forty or more different authorities, as under