View report page

66
Works, and transferring generally to such Vestries and District Boards all authority
in relation to paving, lighting, watering, cleansing or improving any parish, and all
the powers of Surveyors of Highways, by Sections 119 and 120 authority was
conferred upon such Vestries and District Boards to remove or to require the removal
of any projection or obstruction placed or made against or in front of any house or
building after the commencement of that Act, which should be an annoyance in
consequence of the same projecting into or being made in or endangering or rendering
less commodious the passage along any street, and in the event of a refusal to
comply with such request a penalty was imposed upon the person so refusing.
Then by Section 120 power was given to such Vestries and District Boards to
remove any such projections or obstructions which were existing at the time of the
commencement of the Act; but where such projections then lawfully existed, reasonable
compensation was to be made to the person affected by such removal.
The effect of these two sections was, in all cases where such projections were
unlawful, to compel their removal absolutely, but in cases where at the time of the
commencement of the Act projections existed which though annoyances were nevertheless
lawful at the time of their erection, such as projections beyond the line of
frontage made on the parties' own land, then such removal could only be enforced on
compensation to the owner.
By Section 144, the Metropolitan Board of Works had power to make, widen or
improve any streets, roads or ways, and by Section 143, "No building shall, without
the consent in writing of the Metropolitan Board of Works, be erected beyond the
regular line of buildings in the street in which the same is situate, in case the
distance of such line of buildings from the highway do not exceed 30 feet, or within
30 feet of the highway where the distance of the line of buildings therefrom amounts
to or exceeds 30 feet, notwithstanding there being gardens or vacant spaces between
the line of buildings and the highway." This section clearly imposes restraint upon
those who are building, and forbids the erection of any projection beyond the regular
line of building in the street within 30 feet of the highway, even though there be
land of which the builder is owner and occupier intervening between the line of
buildings and the highway. In other words, the section is a restraint upon an owner
of land from building upon that land beyond the regular line of buildings in the street
If, after reading this section of the Metropolis Management Act, 1855, which, by the
way, comes first in order in the Statute Book (being Chapter 120 of 18 and 19
Victoria), one reads Section 26 of the Building Act, which is Chapter 122, it seeius
to my mind clear that the object of the 2nd Sub-section of the latter Act, which I
have already set forth at length, wae merely to make a limited exception in favour of
shop-fronts, whilst Sub-section 5 substantially re-enacted the 143rd Section of the
Metropolis Management Act.
In neither of these Acts is there the slightest trace of any intention on the part
of the Legislature to confer any right on a person proposing to build to do so except
entirely upon his own land, or to build to any extent at his own mere will and with