COPY.
To
Enclosure 5 to Despatch No. 116
of the 10th March, 1903.
326
334
Hongkong, December 3rd., 1902.
His Excellency Sir Henry Arthur Blake, G.C.M.G.,
Governor, of Hongkong.
Your Excellency,
The European landowners of this Colony, who
submitted a petition to Your Excellency dated the 28th. September,
1902, regarding The Public Health and Buildings Bill, recognise
how loyally the principle of compensation has been adopted in the
recent amendments thereto. But they venture respectfully to ask Your
Excellency's further consideration of one instance in which com-
pensation is still, as they consider, improperly withheld.
2.
Section 185 of the Bill, in limiting the height
of new buildings, applies the restriction (in Subsection 2) without
compensation to the case of re-erecting an existing building which
exceeds the limited height. Your petitioners understand that the
framers of the Bill rely on the Glasgow Building Act 1900 as their
precedent herein, which, if it be so, can only proceed from a
misreading of that Act.
3.
follows:-
Your petitioners' reasons for this view are as
Section 3 of the Glasgow Act incorporates the
Land Clauses Acts, the effect whereof is that an owner who sustains
damage by the exercise of any powers in the special Act is entitled
to compensation. Upon this point we could refer Your Excellency to
the authorities of Cripp's on Compensation, page 112, where it is
said that "although the special Act contains no substantive provision
the Lands Clauses Act 1845, taken as a whole, gives the owner of
land (which includes houses) injuriously affected a right to
compensation": and of the case R. v. Saint Lukes, LR 7 QB page
148
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