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parliamentary hills, etc.—continued.
Rating Ground Values.—The Bill seeks to enact that leaseholders
for more than 150 years are to be deemed freeholders. No
Local Authority may levy a rate for repayment of any loan for the
purpose of effecting permanent improvements, and it is proposed
that existing liabilities of Local Authorities shall be transferred to
the London County Council (save as regards the payment of interest),
and the Council be empowered to levy an improvement rate for the
repayment of loans so transferred upon the gross rateable value.
Occupiers will be entitled to deduct the rate from their rent. Where
premises are held at a nominal rent under long leases the Council
will refund the rate to the occupier, and apply at Quarter Sessions
for an order charging the amount on the freehold of the premises
with interest payable at 3 per cent., and it is provided that
immediately on the determination of the tenant's interest amounts
due under the order shall be payable out of such premises as if the
same were arrears of the rate for the past year. Owners are to be
prohibited from contracting themselves out of their liabilities. The
Hill was eventually dropped.
Salaried Shop Assistants' Weekly Half-Holiday.—By the
Bill it is provided that every keeper of a shop shall, in each week,
on a working day to be selected by him, grant a half-holiday to
every assistant who has been employed by him for not less than
three months, such holiday to commence not later than 4 p.m. A
register of the holidays to which each assistant is entitled must
be kept. A fine, not exceeding £5, is to be imposed upon shopkeepers
contravening any of the provisions of the Act. Provision is
made in case of offences committed by servants or agents. Appeal
against conviction may be made to Quarter Sessions. The provisions
of the Act will not apply in cases of shops regularly closed
on one working day in each week before 4 p.m. The term shop is
not to include refreshment houses, premises in which intoxicating
liquor is sold for consumption on the premises, or tobacconist's
shops On the 19th June, 1890, it was resolved to request the