View report page

187
[1904
for the work you have done to the combined drain or sewer." The result has
been that latterly an almost invariable delay has occurred where defective combined
drains are concerned, and a frequent delay where other nuisances
exist, especially if they appear on the same "intimation" with a defective
drain. The evil is unfortunately spreading from one class of nuisances to all
nuisances. No doubt it will continue to spread, for property owners
look keenly after their rights, irrespective of the feelings and wishes of
their tenants. It is much to be regretted that any sanitary authorities should
have ever adopted the course indicated, for it has been the undoubted cause of
raising in an acute form the question of the "intimation'' not being a notice. The
Medical Officer of Health feels, and has always advised, that although an authority
may not be legally compellable to pay for work done under the inspector's "intimations"
yet that morally they are. Many owners of property even yet do not
understand the difference between an "intimation" and a notice, but believe, and
naturally so, that since the authority orders the inspector to make the inspections,
and the Public Health Act decrees that he shall do so, and since the
sanitary authority provide printed forms for the inspector and pay his postages
where necessary, that an "intimation" is a notice from the sanitary authority,
which it undoubtedly is de facto although not de jure. The law should be
brought into line with common sense.

Notices Served.—There were 4,287 intimations served by the inspectors,
of which 4,192 were delivered by themselves personally, and 95 forwarded