The amount of compensation to be paid to the owner is to be settled by arbitration if no agreement can be arrived at, such arbitration to be carried out in a manner provided for by certain clauses in this Amendment Act 1879.
Sec. 9 of the same Act also provides for the repayment (by sale of old materials, &c.) of the cost incurred by the local authority in executing any works under the Acts.
This Act has again been amended quite recently (August 1882) by “An Act to Amend the Artizans and Labourers’ Dwellings Acts” (45 & 46 Vic. c. 54), the most important clause affecting the working of this Act being as follows:
(1.) “If in any place to which the Artizans and Labourers’ Dwellings Act 1868 applies the officer of health finds that any building, although not in itself unfit for human habitation, is so situate that by reason of its proximity to or contact with any other building it causes one of the following effects, that is to say:
“(1.) It stops ventilation or otherwise makes or conduces to make such other buildings to be in a condition unfit for human habitation; or
“(2.) It prevents proper measures from being carried into effect for remedying the evils complained of in respect of such other buildings,
in any such case the officer of health shall make a report to the local authority in writing of the particulars relating to such first-mentioned building (in this Act referred to as ‘an obstructive building’) stating that in his opinion it is expedient that the obstructive building should be pulled down, and shall deliver the report to the clerk of the local authority.
“(2.) The local authority shall refer such report to a surveyor or engineer to report thereon, and to report as to the cost of acquiring the lands on which such obstructive building is erected, and of pulling down such building.”
The local authority then consider the reports of the officer of health and of the surveyor, and proceed to give copies to the owner of the lands in question, who has liberty of appeal, &c., as before given in the Act 1868. The lands may be acquired by the local authority by agreement or compulsorily under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, and the obstructive building, “or such part thereof as may be obstructive,” may be pulled “down, and the whole site, or such part thereof as may be required to be kept open for the purpose of remedying the evils” kept as an open space.
The owner of the land may, by giving due notice, declare that “he desires to retain the site of the obstructive building, and undertake either to pull down or to permit the local authority to pull down, the obstructive building,” in which case he retains the site, and is compensated only for the building.