UNION ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE (SINGLE PARISHES) BILL. (Hansard, 6 July 1880)

VISCOUNT ENFIELD,

in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, the Bill was a very short one, and had encountered no opposition in its passage through the House of Commons. Its object was to enable the Local Government Board, upon application from the 1732 Guardians of what were called "single parishes," to apply to them the provisions of the Union Assessment Committee Act (passed in 1862) in the same way as they applied it to Unions under Local Acts and to Gilbert's Incorporations. The Act of 1862 was a great improvement upon the Parochial Assessment Act of 1836, as, instead of allowing the overseers, very often ignorant and illiterate men, to make the rates, these duties were transferred to the Guardians, who appointed a competent body, called an assessment committee, to carry out that necessary work. This change had worked well; but unfortunately single parishes, not in union, had not been able to avail themselves of its provisions, and this Bill, which was not, however, compulsory, but optional, would permit them to be brought, with the assent of the Local Government Board, under the provisions of the Act of 1862. The following was a list of parishes under separate Boards of Guardians; and he thought it would be admitted that in these cases it would be better that the assessment of property for the purposes of rates should be in the hands of an assessment committee rather than in the hands of overseers. Many of these localities were large and important places — namely, Whittlesea, Alston, East Stone house, Stoke Damerel, Barrow-in-Furness, Liverpool, Manchester, Toxteth Park, Great Yarmouth, Alver-stoke, Stoke-upon-Trent, Brighton, Birmingham, and Saddleworth. Many of those localities had expressed themselves as favourable to the principle of this measure; and it was for that reason that, on behalf of the Local Government Board, he now moved the second reading of the Bill.