§ Sir WILLIAM BULLasked the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the case of the Camberwell Borough Council and Arlidge, and to the fact that in that case Mr. Arlidge appealed to the Local Government Board, in accordance with the provisions of The Housing, Town Planning, etc., Act, 1909, against closing orders made by the council in April last in respect of three houses in Camberwell, and to the fact that Mr. Arlidge's request that the Board should inspect the premises with a view to deciding summarily whether or not the orders were justifiable was refused, and to the fact that the Board required that a local public inquiry should be held before one of their inspectors, which inquiry was held on the 15th, 23rd, and 27th June, 1910, and that on the 26th September the Board made an order quashing the closing orders, but refused to give the appellant any costs or to give any reason for depriving him of his costs, and also refused to supply the appellant with a copy of their inspector's report; and whether, in view of the facts mentioned, tending to show how unsatisfactory is the procedure that has to be followed on appeal from the local councils, the President is willing to consider the expediency of amending the Act by substituting a judicial tribunal in the place of the Local Government Board as the appeal tribunal?
§ Mr. BURNSI am fully aware of the facts of the case referred to. If the Act had passed in the form in which I introduced the Bill I could have complied with the appellant's request, and saved both time and expense. The Act was, however, altered in Committee, at the instance of the hon. Member's friends, so as to make a local public inquiry a statutory necessity before an appeal can be dismissed. The facts as to the inquiry and the order of the Board are as stated in the question, but I do not agree with the suggestion of the hon. Member that the procedure, in so far as it involves an appeal to the Local Government Board rather than to a judicial tribunal, has been shown to be unsatisfactory. On the contrary, I am inclined to think that the change of procedure in this respect brought about by the Act of 1909 has worked very satisfactorily.