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Showing results for tags 'statutory powers'.
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This picture is Boney's Bridge, carrying the Thames Path over the Bulstake Stream in Oxford. The Bulstake Stream has a right of navigation under the bridge and under others. I'm working elsewhere on the Thames (or rather, a backwater) on a Statutory Instrument for a similar bridge, which won't be a problem. However, some idle (As in not entirely relevant to the topic we're working on) questions got me thinking - it started with someone asking whether Boney's Bridge had an SI. SI have only been around since 1948 (and are only published on the Government website if made since 1990) - SI's are secondary legislation, so to get one to take a road over a navigable river one must have the power to build the road in the first place. The above bridge was almost certainly built before 1948, it's of a style similar to bridges I can evidence were built at the end of the 1920's and early 30's, so an SI wasn't used. they didn't exist. I understand that the Bulstake Stream was the main navigation stream until Osney Lock was built in 1790 (although elsewhere I've read that the Castle Mill Stream, on the other bank, also had this function in the past). It may be that a bridge (but not this one) was built to carry the towpath up to Osney Lock - assuming there was a towpath that is. So I guess my question is, what powers would have been used for bridges like this? Or would the navigation authority (Thames Conservancy after 1857, various commissioners before then) have just done it and not worried about the legal niceties? Nothing in particular rides on the answer, I'm just generally interested. That said, on occasion I do get handed legal riddles whereby it appears that someone acted without authority over 200 years ago and all successors have just assumed the initial agency had the powers to do what they did.