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the water supply from premises in respect of which the water rate had not
been paid, and to substitute legal proceedings for the recovery of such
rate, where necessary.
The following letter was submitted to the Committee:—
Metropolitan Water Board,
Savoy Court, Strand, W.C.,
31st December, 1906.
Dear Sir,
Disconnecting Supplies for non-payment of Water Rate.
With reference to the resolutions recently passed by the Islington
Borough Council on the subject of the disconnection of supplies by the
Water Board as a means of recovery of outstanding water rates, I am
directed by the Finance Committee to inform you of the following facts.
The subject was gone into very carefully by the Committee in
February, 1905, when they decided that it would not be in the interests of
the Board and therefore of the general body of consumers to entirely
abandon the practice. Since that date, however, the power to cut off
supplies has been very sparingly used; the number of disconnections
being reduced to a minimum.
No supplies are disconnected without the order of the Committee
being first obtained, and in each case the whole of the surrounding
circumstances are brought before them and fully considered. It has been
the practice to refrain from giving such orders where the premises are
known to be occupied by more than one family, and in genuine cases of
poverty. Moreover, as you are doubtless aware, the Board are precluded
by the Water Companies (Regulation of Powers) Act, 1887, from cutting
off water where the owner and not the occupier is liable by law or by
agreement for the payment of the water rate in respect of any dwellinghouse
or part of a dwelling-house occupied as a separate tenement.
With regard to the suggestion that the Board are continuing the
practice of the late Companies, I am to state that the number of cases
disconnected by the Board is very considerably less than before the
transfer from the Companies, in fact, it amounts to less than one-third.
During the half-year to Michaelmas, 1906, out of a total of nearly
1,100,000 supplies only 213 were actually withdrawn, and of these 213
cases, 132 were merely turned off at the stopcock, leaving only 81 cases
in which a physical disconnection was made.
When regard is had to the fact that the Board's area of supply