Land on Deferred Payments.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 212, 2 December 1873, Page 7

Land on Deferred Payments.

The DaUy Times thus summarises tho conditions of the occupation license to he issued by the Waste Lands Board to the holders of land on deferred payments :(-p" The Occupation feo must be. paid h*lf-yejir|y in.a'divance ;• the licensee or his assigns cannot, until the Crown grant is obtained, sublet his allotment or any part of it ; he must, within -three years, from the issue of his license, enclose the whole of the land with a good and substantial fence, and have a tenth of it at least under cultivation ; he must personally occupy the allotment within six months of the issue of his'license, and. thenceforward to its continuance ; he must make substantial and permanent improvements on the land held by him equal to £1 per acre on the whole area ; and in the event of the non-fulfilment of any of these conditions,- the license- may be annulled. But if all these conditions are complied with to the.satisfaction of the Board, the licensee may, at the expiry of three years, obtain a Crown grant of the land upon payment of a seventeen shillings and sixpence per acre. If, however, he should' so elect, a lease of the allotment for a term of seven years will be given on the same terms as before, as regards rent; and upon the payment of the last half-yearly rent due for the extended period, or upon the payment at any time of the difference between what he has: already paid per acre in the shape of occupation fee and rent anjl the entire sum of twenty- 1 five shillings per acre, the lessee or his representatives shall be entitled to a Crown grant of the land. In other words, the price of the land is to be twenty-five shillings per acre, but the occupier, if lie- chooses',' may pay the purchase money by twenty half-yearly instalments, no interest being chargeable all the while for the unpaid portion of the price. There is also a provision to the effect that in the case of the death of the licensee or his assigns during the currency of the three years' license, it shall not" be obligatory on the executors or the administrators of such licensee or his assigns to comply with the condition of personal occupation. " The provisions of the Act which relate to the applications for occupation allotments, and the manner in which, they are to be disposed of, seem to be very carefully prepared, and likely to work fairly on the whole. With a view to prevent the obtaining of leases for merely speculative purposes, "the Act provides that no person shall become the licensee in his own name, or in that of others, for more than 200 acres ; that no license shall be issued to any person who is under eighteen years of age, or who is a married woman not having obtained a decree 'of judicial separation, or who is in respect of the allotment applied for an agent, servant, or trustee for any other person, or who-at the time of the application has entered into any agreement to dispose of the allotment or his interest in it in any way to.any other person. " As yet only one block of land seems .to have been opened for application by the Government. It consists of 5000 acres adjoining Toitois Harbour, at the mouth of the Mataura River, and to which We have already referred as being all over worth £3 per acre. It is understood that more than half of this land is already taken up, and that the -whole is likely soon to be applied for. At its last session, the Provincial Council, on the invitation of the Superintendent, authorised His Honor to take the necessary steps to set apart, under the deferred payment system, ten different blocks of land in various parts of the Province. They contain in the aggregate 30,000 acres, being the maximum area authorised by the Waste Lands Act to be taken in any one year."