View report page

17
It is not quite easy to find a remedy. The passages are private
property, and the Council is not desirous of scavenging these
unless the cost is duly apportioned under the P. H. Acts.
All that the Sanitary Department can do, if any accumulation
is found to be a nuisance, is to serve a notice for its removal
on the person to whose house it is contiguous.
Such person is usually the person aggrieved, and not the
person who causes the nuisance to occur.
The work undertaken with regard to Nuisances is summarized
in tables given on pp. 56 and 57 by Mr. Grylls, to whoseexperience
and tact the district has for so many years been indebted.
It will be seen that the house-to-house inspections were slightly
fewer than 1908, but that more work was done by way of house
cleansing and disinfection, there having been more visits to houses
in which notifiable disease occurred.
No legal proceedings were taken, as in every case the defects
were remedied, and in only 36 cases was it necessary to serve a
Statutory Notice.
No serious nuisances were complained of during 1909, and the
general condition of the district is year by year rising to a higher
level.
It should be observed that the table on page 56 is not merely a
record of the nuisances discovered, but of the nuisances abated.
Bye-Laws.
For some years past I have, in these reports, alluded to the
desirability of some Bye-Law being adopted that would check the
construction of double tenements with inordinate "back additions."
Early in 1909 the matter was considered by the Council, and
after a conference with officials of the Local Government Board, it