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218
UNDERGROUND ROOMS.
The several District Surveyors are required by the Metropolis
Management Act to make a half-yearly report to the Metropolitan
Board of Works upon Underground Rooms. A copy
of the several Reports is forwarded to the Sanitary Authority
of the respective districts. Your Vestry always refer these
reports to the Works, Sanitary, and General Purposes Committee,
and last year the Committee requested me to furnish
them with some observations on the subject, which I did in
the following terms:—
" In my report of March 13th, 1885, on' Sanitary, Nuisances Eemoval,
and other cognate Acts, addressed to the Law and Parliamentary Committee,
I pointed out that' the Vestry have power to prevent the occupation of
underground rooms as dwellings when not built or constructed in conformity
with the rules laid down in Section 103 of the Metropolis Management
Act, and such rooms, 'I added,' are periodically reported to the Vestry by
the District Surveyors; but the powers of the Acts have not hitherto been
exercised.'
" The Committee in their report, which was adopted by the Vestry,
February 10th, 1886, recommended that' the reports of the District
Surveyors be referred, when received, to the Works, Sanitary and General
Purposes Committee, with a view to inquiry by the Sanitary Inspectors and to
such action as the circumstances of each case may seem to warrant.'
" The half-yearly reports of the District Surveyors received in January
last were duly referred to your Committee, and inquiry has been made with
respect to underground rooms by the several Sanitary Inspectors, in conformity
with the direction of the Vestry.
" The reports of the District Surveyors treat of the circumstances of the
several underground rooms as they relate, on the one hand, to structural
conditions or defects; and, on the other hand, to removable sanitary detects.
The first-named, or structural defects, are beyond the power of the Sanitary
Inspectors to remedy, and these officers can only submit needless confirmation
of the accuracy of the reports of the District Surveyors as to facts:—
such as that a room is not one foot above the surface of the road; that the
area is not six inches below the floor nor effectively drained; that there is
no proper area, and so on. These reports, as started, come in half yearly,