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25
No action has, at present, been taken by the Board
with regard to the other Bills in the foregoing list.
Removal of subsoil
from site of
Street
As stated in the last annual report evidence
was given before the Parliamentary Committee
on behalf of the Board in support of the Metropolis
Management Amendment Act, 1890, one of the provisions
of which the Board understood to be intended to
empower Vestries and District Boards, if they thought fit,
to prohibit the removal of the sub-soil from the site of
an intended new road. Upon the plan of a proposed
new road (Brayburne Avenue, Clapham) being submitted
the Board refused their approval to the excavation of
any sand, gravel, or sub-soil frOm the site beyond what
was necessary to level or to form a foundation for the
paving, metalling, or flagging of the road. The owner
having declined to comply with the order of the Board
in the matter was summoned for an infringement of the
Act and the magistrate decided in favor of the defendant.
The Board appealed, and the Divisional Court, consisting
of Mr. Justice Hawkins and Mr. Justice Wills, after
taking time to consider their judgment, dismissed the
appeal. Mr. Justice Hawkins in delivering judgment
said the language of the Act was not such as was
calculated to throw very much clearness upon the interpretation
to be put upon it, but that upon the best
consideration their lordships could give to the case it
appeared to them that the respondent was right, and
that there was no power conferred upon the District
Board absolutely to refuse to allow, under any circumstances,
any sand, gravel or sub-soil to be taken from
land upon which a street had been formed or wholly or
in part laid out; that the power given to the Board under
those circumstances was only to impose conditions, which
might be as stringent as it was possible to make them,
and that the expression in the Act "refuse their
approval" referred only to cases where gravel or other
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