View report page

171
Cutting-off powers ok the companies.—The Public
Health (London) Act, 1891, sec. 49, gives effect to the recommendation
made in these reports, many years ago, that a
Metropolitan Water Company should be required to give
information to the Sanitary Authority, when, from any cause,
they had exercised their statutory right to cut-off the water
supply of an occupied dwelling-house. Every company is
now required to give such notice within twenty-four hours
after exercising the said right, under liability to a fine, not
exceeding ten pounds, for default. The power to cut-off the
supply is, no doubt, of some value to the Companies,
when the rate is in arrear, seeing that "an occupied
house without a proper and sufficient supply of water,"
is by law, " deemed unfit for human habitation " (sec. 48).
In all such cases, reported by the several Companies,
the Sanitary Authority are obliged to take steps to ensure
restoration of the supply—which is necessarily preceded
by the payment of the Company's claim. The cutting-off
powers were materially limited in 1887, by the Water Companies
(Regulation of Powers) Act (familiarly known as
"Forrest Fulton's Act"), which is described as "an Act to
limit the powers of the Water Companies to cut off the
tenant's water supply when the rate is paid by the landlord,"
as is very generally the case in regard to tenement houses and
houses otherwise occupied in lodgings,&c., by the poorer classes.
The beneficent result of this legislation, the need for which was
shown in these reports many years ago, is that the water
supply of the poor is generally secured, and that, with the
safeguard provided, without material (if any) risk of loss to the
Companies. Surely it is time that the power to cut-off the supply
from an occupied house should cease altogether ; and that, as
I suggested in 1882, " the Company should be left to their
remedy for the recovery of the rate as a debt, like other
traders," and not be allowed to create a dangerous nuisance
merely as a coercive measure for securing the payment of the
rate. One enlightened Company, the East London, resolved