View report page

99
purely local regulations introduces much diversity of
practice, it is highly desirable that the County Council
should exercise their power of making bye-laws for
the Metropolis, as is provided by Section 202 of the
Metropolis Local Management Act, 1855, which enacts
that “the said Metropolitan Board (now County
Council) may also from time to time make, alter, and
repeal bye-laws for regulating the dimensions,
form, and mode of construction, and the keeping,
cleansing, and repairing of the pipes, drains, and
other means of communicating with sewers and the
traps and apparatus connected therewith.”
The bye-laws at present in force, deal only with
soil-pipes and water-closets, and owing to the uncertainty
which exists as to the mode of construction
which can be enforced in other respects, the work is
done in many cases according to the private views of
the owner or his builder, with the result that it
becomes necessary for the Department to interfere
within a longer or shorter period to complete, remedy,
and correct what ought to have been done
properly in the first instance. It is not the first
demand by the Sanitary Authority which is resisted
by the property-owners, but the second and succeeding,
which are frequently due to the incompleteness
with which the first demand was complied with.
The question of combined drainage was the subject
of a Conference in the summer of last year, at
which delegates from the various Metropolitan Local