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for any failure to comply with the provisions of the bye-laws.
By this decision both the existing and the revised bye-laws
became useless, for although it had always been the practice
in Battersea to serve a notice on the landlord to carry out the
necessary cleansing, &c., there was no provision to this effect
in our bye-laws, nor, so far as I am aware, in any bye-laws in
force at that time. In May, 1904, the Local Government Board
forwarded to the Council a revised set of model bye-laws, in
which the difficulty raised by the High Court decisions was met
by the introduction of a new clause providing that no proceedings
should be taken against the landlord (or keeper) for an offence
against any of the bye-laws unless and until the Council had
served on him a notice requiring him to comply with the bye-laws
within a reasonable time. The Council again revised the
bye-laws by the introduction of this new clause, and the
consequential additions to other clauses, and submitted the
bye-laws thus revised to the Board.
In October, 1904, the Health Committee received a
Deputation from the Battersea Municipal Alliance, who
expressed strong objections to three points in the revised
bye-laws, namely: the definition of the term "landlord," the
absence of a rental exemption limit, and the raising of the
standard of cubic air space. The Alliance subsequently
embodied their objections in a memorandum addressed to the
Local Government Board, and a copy of this memorandum was
forwarded to the Council by the Board, who subsequently
forwarded a similar memorandum which they had received from
the Incorporated Association for the Protection of Property
Owners. In view of the strong objections to the new bye-laws
the Board held a Local Inquiry on 14th July, 1905, and to meet
the objections brought forward at the Inquiry it was proposed
on behalf of the Council to amend the exemption clause so as to
provide for the exemption of a lodging-house, where, in addition
to the keeper and his family, there are not more than three
(instead of two as formerly proposed) persons lodging in the
house, and to lower the standards of cubic air space from 400
and 500 cubic feet to 350 and 450 respectively; these being the
standards adopted in the bye-laws already in force in the City