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
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.
116/126 (page 88)
![20° Maii, 1936.] | Continued. improvement in the value of your pro- perty that I am giving you by bringing this sewer into your property. It is advancing the development of your pro- perty, and you can sell your property by just about the same amount as the value of this wayleave; therefore we shall pay you nothing, and you shall be in the happy position of having a sewer earlier than you otherwise would have done.’’ Sir Henry Cautley.] Under what Act are they allowed to do that? Mr. Wrottesley.] Under the special sec- tion of the Romford Act I can see no answer to that. I have racked my brains about it, and I have asked for an answer to it, and I have not been given one. Surely that means that I have bought my interest in that sewer, and I have paid for every pennyworth of value that sewer gives me. In every case where the enhancement of value is less than the compensation, I~have obviously paid for the whole benefit of receiving that sewer through my land. The Surveyor has to deduct, from what I should charge for having my property broken up and temporarily sterilised, at any rate, ex- actly the enhancement in value of my land through the sewer coming there. If that is so, how can it be just, when, a little later, I make a road down on top of that sewer and do what I have been told I have been given the chance to do, to use the sewer, that they should say: ‘‘ But the sewer cost more; the sewer cost twice as much as the enhancement of the value of your land and we are going to make you pay’’. You see, so far as it runs through my land, I pay the whole of the cost. I do not know the answer to that. But I find that there is not a case, with the exception of Wigan, where this section has not been carried in at the same time as this betterment section. That I say is an intolerable hardship; there is no provi- sion made against it. I ransom myself to this sewer. I buy it, as it were, be- cause I have deducted from my wayleave the whole improvement in the value of my property; I buy it today. In 10 years I want to build over it. There is no question that I must put a road over that sewer, because the land has been sterilised and I cannot build over it, so almost necessarily I am driven to build a road down the whole length of that sewer. What happens to me? I am then hit once more for any balance up to the total cost of the sewer. Sir Henry Cautley.] You get no better- ment from the sewer unless you can use it? Mr. Wrottesley.] No, I get no better- ment from the sewer unless I can use it. What is the enhancement in value? A sewer is not an ornament to a pro- perty; it 1s not a matter of amenity. It is laid down in this section (I take the Romford Act, and they are all the same, except Wigan) that in every case I have, first of all, the value of this sewer taken off me to-day; in 10 years time I desire to make use of it, and I am told that I have to pay the rest of the cost of it. They have had the use of my property for 10 years, yet when I go and suggest that I should make use of my estate by laying a road on top of it or by the side of it, they say: ‘‘ You must pay the total cost of it; the enhancement was not as much as the total cost of the sewer.’’ I do not know if my learned friend has an answer to that; I cannot find one, but I find it is not an unusual case. Whether these two sections got in by accident or by design I do not know; I can only assume it was by design. The whole trouble is that there has been this confusion of thought, in my sub- mission, between frontage and_ benefit. If you are going to deal with trunk sewers passing from point A to point B through my property, it is perhaps quite reasonable that you should at the right time make me pay my enhancement. That may be right; but if you try to work it out on the basis of frontage you get the most odd results. If you take this simple case, here is my pro- perty, a rectangular property; here 1s the line of that sewer crossing that corner and therefore laid out in possibly the least convenient way and running all along the edge of my property here. If the line of that sewer happens to be at the edge of my property I make my road there. I only develop one side of my property. The person the other side has the whole length of that sewer and does not pay a farthing. It is entirely fallacious, in my submission, to base it on frontage. Mr. Tyldesley Jones.| Is the street in that case right on the edge of your land P Mr. Wrottesley.| Yes. Mr. Tyldesley Jones. | pay under my clause. Mr. Wrottesley.| Who pays? Then he does](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32186022_0116.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
