§ Sub-section (2).—The Local Government Board may dispense with the publication of advertisements or the service of notices required to be published or served by a local authority under the Housing Acts, if they are satisfied that there is reasonable cause for dispensing with the publication or service.
§ Lords Amendment: Leave out "or the service of notices."
§ Question proposed, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
§ Sir F. BANBURYI should like to have an explanation of the reason which induces the right hon. Gentleman to disagree with this Amendment, as I under- 1548 stand that this Amendment simply provides that notice shall be given to the owners and other people interested in connection with any proceedings that the Local Government Board may desire to take. The effect of the omission will be that the Local Government Board may do all sorts of things without giving notice to the people affected. The matter seems to me small, but rather important.
§ Mr. BURNSIn response to the hon. Baronet I may say that the Amendment, which was moved and carried in another place, will prevent the Local Government Board from dispensing with service of notice if the Board are satisfied that there is reasonable cause. It is a most useful power, and a power which the Board ought to have. The object is to meet cases where there has been a substantial, but not literal, compliance with the Act in regard to advertisements and notices. Hon. Members in the legal profession know that at times these notices and advertisements are published in the local papers, and occasionally there has not been a full notice in the strict sense of the word. Ordinarily the Board would insist upon the notices and advertisements being properly carried out. There may be certain circumstances, as hon. and learned Gentlemen will probably know, where there has been a substantial but not literal compliance, and in all cases of that kind the Board ought not to ask the party to go through the additional period of a fortnight, three weeks, or a month for the new notice, when probably seven-eighths of the requisite and necessary notice has been given. I can assure the hon. Baronet that if this power is given to the Board it will only be exercised in those cases where even he will admit such discretion ought to be given to the Board.