Land Drainage Act 1930
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| Long title | An Act to amend and consolidate the enactments relating to the drainage of land, and for purposes in connection with such amendment. |
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| Citation | 1930 c 44 |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 1 August 1930 |
The Land Drainage Act 1930 was an Act of Parliament passed by the United Kingdom Government which provided a new set of administrative structures to ensure that drainage of low-lying land could be managed effectively. It followed the proposals of a Royal Commission which sat during 1927. It sought to set up a Catchment Board with overall responsibility for each of the main rivers of England and Wales, and to alter the basis on which drainage rates could be collected, removing the 400-year-old precept that only those who directly benefitted from drainage works could be expected to pay for them.
Prior to the 1930s, land drainage in the United Kingdom was regulated by the Statute of Sewers, passed by King Henry VIII in 1531, and several further acts which built upon that foundation. However, there was some dissatisfaction with these powers, as although there were administrative bodies with powers to manage the drainage of low-lying areas, they did not have sufficient resources to do this effectively. Existing drainage boards and those who lived and worked in the areas they covered made complaints to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries during the 1920s, and the Government decided that a thorough review of the situation should be carried out.
Accordingly, a Royal Commission was set up, with Lord Bledisloe acting as its chairman. It was convened on 26 March 1927, and produced a final report later that year, on 5 December. The report described the existing laws as "vague and ill-defined, full of anomalies, obscure, lacking in uniformity, and even chaotic." It recommended that any replacement should have powers to carry out the work necessary for efficient drainage, together with the provision of financial resources to enable them to carry out their duties. At the time there were 361 drainage authorities covering England and Wales, and the proposed solution of having catchment boards responsible for each main river, with powers over the individual drainage boards, was essentially the same as had been proposed in 1877 by a select committee of the House of Lords. The report formed the basis for the subsequent bill.
The bill became an Act of Parliament on 1 August 1930, and came into force immediately. Its full title was "An act to amend and consolidate the enactments relating to the drainage of land, and for purposes in connection with such amendment." One unusual aspect of the Act was that it repealed most of the legislation that had preceded it. In total, 16 acts dating from 1531 to 1929 were repealed, and three others were amended.
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