Report by the Joint committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on public sewers (contributions by frontagers) : together with the proceedings of the committee and minutes of evidence and speeches delivered by counsel.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. Joint Committee on Public Sewers
Date:
1936
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report by the Joint committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on public sewers (contributions by frontagers) : together with the proceedings of the committee and minutes of evidence and speeches delivered by counsel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    112/126 (page 84)
    20° Maii, 1936.] Mr, Mr. Tyldesley Jones.| Yes, it is; cows are grazing there. Lord Macmillan.] Nothing could better illustrate the difficulty when you come down to brass tacks. It seems to me when I put a practical example like this that everybody finds it necessary to say there is something wrong with it. We have got past the agricultural field. We cannot look for any payment from them just now. We come next to the cricket ground, and there the question would be. “Ts this a place on which we could lay any charge’’? First of all, there is a pavilion on it, but you say: ‘‘ This was existing at the date when the notice for the Bill was given, and therefore we cannot exact anything there at all’’. We pass on. The next thing we come to are the gates of a gentleman’s house, and we look over the wall and we see perhaps for 100 yards a small mansion house and a park in front and some flower beds and that sort of thing. That is existing; 1t is there on the spot. From them also you cannot get anything? Witness. ] No. Lord Macmillan.] I do not see how you are going to get anything at all primo loco from many of these people, and if that is the character of the district through which you have driven this road, I do not see how you are going to get anything from them unless all of them are chargeable. They are told ““ Now if you develop, you will have to pay,’ but in the meantime the loral authority have done it at their own charge? Chairman.| Unless they had to take a sewer to get to somewhere else. Witness.] That is exactly the case we contemplated here: ‘‘ The effect of this, if accompanied by the usual provision that the recovery of a charge against un- developed land is to be postponed until the land comes into development, would be that at the date when the sewer was constructed the authority would not be in a position to recover any of the cost, but that recovery could be subsequently effected from time to time as and vhen the land charged came into develop- ment.”’ that it ought not to until it is developed. Mr. Tyldesley Jones.] We are wonder- ing why a local authority should under those circumstances lay a sewer there at all? Chairman.| To get to a place beyond. | Continued. Mr. Tyldesley Jones.] Then we shall get a contribution from those beyond, I suppose ? Captain Bourne.] Surely, you might get a case like this, where you extended your boundaries on a boundary exten- sion; you have brought in an area, per- haps a densely inhabited one, with no sewerage beyond. You feel that in the interests of your locality it would be desirable to connect that with vour main sewerage system, and you therefore run your sewer down your new road, rect be- cause of the interest in the road itself but because it is the cheapest and easiest means of getting at this outlying spot? Mr. Tyldesley Jones.| If that is so, it is quite plain that, if the character of the land that we pass is such as Lord Macmillan has been putting, we shall get no contribution from many of these land- owners until they develop, and provided there is a proper definition of and lmit- ation to, ‘‘ development,’’ we should not object. Chairman.] You would get nothing at all from anybody, nothing from the people to whom you were taking your sewer, because they would already be in existence, and you would get nothing from the other people because they were not yet developed. Mr. Tyldesley Jones.| Not until they were developed. Chairman.| Supposing we take this walk that Lord Macmillan took, and pass by the cows, and we get to a cricket field on which people have spent a lot of money in developing, but they kave not built a pavilion. They say: ‘‘ We have spent £5,000 in levelling this cricket field, and we must spend £200 in making a place for people to change their clothes in’’. Are you then going to charge the whole of the frontage cf that cricket field as a contribution to the sewer because you are building a small building? Witness.] On the formula suggested, would the whole cricket field be developed for building purposes? 41. That is what I want to know?—I agree that it is rather a nasty case. Mr. Tyldesley Jones.] May I say that I do not think the local authorities would press that a cricket ground ought to pay. Lord Macmillan.] I would rather have it in a Statute than leave it to the tender mercies of local authorities.