Private Streets-a Grievance.

Patea Mail, 21 August 1882, Page 3

Private Streets-a Grievance.

Some concession should be made, if the Borough Council can legally do so, _to reduce the hardship of many working men who are struggling to purchase the houses they live in. These men have mostly become property holders in the belief that private streets marked on a plan would become public streets when the borough was extended to include those streets. The suburb known as Storey’s paddock was sold in very small sections to various working men who have managed to put up houses. The streets in that paddock have been impassable in places during the winter, there being nasty mud-holes or water-pools where you don t expect to find them in the dark. The question now arises, can the Borough Council spend rates on those streets to make them passable? We suppose the Council would not be expected to do more than this for. streets in a suburban paddock. The Mayor rules that the Council cannot do even this, because the Municipal Corporations Act , specifies that the Council cannot be required to take over private streets until they are first formed, gravelled, .kerbed, and sewered, A proper construction of this provision may be open to doubt. It seems to have been intended as a protection against a Borough Council being forced by some greedy landowner to take over and maintain any streets which he chooses to mark on a plan. The Act says the private owner shall do certain things ; and it follows that when he has done them, the Council can be compelled at law to take over and maintain such streets.

In new boroughs it would be absurd to require gravelling, kerbing, and even sewering to be done in every stieet, else some streets would have to remain private streets for ever. Some suburban streets ' require only formation to make them serve sufficiently for the traffic. Where this is so, why should not the Council have power to require as much work to be done as they deem necessary, according to the traffic, before taking over a private street ? We believe the Act could not have been intended as a bar to prevent Councils exercising a discretionary power. The language may not be peimissive, but the other construction is too harsh and unworkable. In the case of Storey’s paddock, the sins of a greedy capitalist ought not to be visited on present holders who have paid at the rate, of £l2O to £IGO an acre for their bits of freehold, and who naturally expected that, by being taken into the extended borough area, they would get some borough benefit. We ask, in the name of common justice, that all poor holders so situated may get ,such share of borough expenditure as the Council can legally and prudently give.