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the several appeals against individual assessments from £2,025,631
gross and £1,686,385 rateable, to £1,998,770 gross and £1,658,655
rateable, but the time for giving notice of appeal against totals
had long gone by when the Court gave its decision in the Gas Light
and Coke Co.'s case, the decision which so materially affected the total
valuation of the Parish of Islington.
It had been usual, before the duties of compiling the totals was
transferred by the Local Government Act of 1888 from the Clerk of
the Metropolitan Asylums Board to the Clerk of the London County
Council, to treat an alteration of an individual assessment as an
alteration of totals, but since the decision of the High Court in the
Woolwich case the Clerk to the London County Council has refused to
recognise alterations in totals unless initialled by the Court. An
arrangement was therefore come to between the Vestry, as the
Overseers, and the Assessment Committee by which the former
petitioned the Court for leave to appeal against the totals. Leave was
granted subject to the London County Council (whose locus standi in
the matter is not very apparent) not raising any objection, and upon the
hearing of the appeal, inasmuch as the Committee as respondents
consented and the London County Council raised no objection, the
totals were reduced as before stated.
This reduction of £27,730 in the total rateable value of the Parish
means practically a saving of £4,200 per annum in its contribution to
Metropolitan expenditure, and, so far as it goes, is a matter for
congratulation.
A statement shewing the total costs incurred by the Committee in
connection with the Quinquennial Valuation Appeals is appended (see
Table "B"). Of this amount (£4,536 4s. 9d.), the Vestry has already
disbursed £1,573 5s. 2d., and the Committee now requests it to pay the
several accounts, particulars of which are appended, which make up
the balance. The Gas Light and Coke Co.'s account (£1,788 15s. 5d.),
although it, will have to be paid in full, is subject to a set-off in the
shape of costs amounting to £262 16s. 8d., which the Company has to
pay to the Committee. A sum of £100, or perhaps more, may also be
anticipated as the proportion to be repaid to Islington by other parishes
in respect of Mr. Eve's valuation.