Board of Trade, Industries and Manufactures Department and Predecessors: Gas Referees'...

POWE 31

1872-1938

Minute books used by Metroplitan Gas referees.

Arranged chronologically.

Public Record(s)

English

• Board of Trade, Industries and Manufactures Department: Gas Referees, 1920-1942
• Board of Trade, Metropolitan Gas Referees, 1872-1920

10 volume(s)

Topics

Manufacturing

Trade and commerce

Oil and gas

The Metropolitan Gas Referees were originally appointed by the Board of Trade under the City of London Gas Act, 1868.

Under this, and subsequent Acts, up to 1920 their duties were concerned only with gas supplied by the London gas undertakings and covered the prescribing and certification of the testing places provided by each undertaking (whether a company or a local authority), the prescribing of methods to be adopted for testing and recording the illuminating power (superseded from 1914 onwards by calorific value standards), purity and pressure of gas, to specify the number of times of testing, and to certify the maximum amount of impurity with which the gas could be charged.

The Gas Regulation Act, 1920 provided for three persons to be appointed by the Board of Trade to act as Gas Referees, whose duties covered England, Scotland and Wales; these were to prescribe the time when, the place where, and the method by which the gas was to be tested.

The 1920 Act, and subsequent Acts made by the Board of Trade, also provided that the results of tests made by each appointed Gas Examiner should be made available to the public and that the gas undertaking should supply gas of a declared calorific value.

The office of the Gas Referees was abolished by the Gas Undertakings Act, 1934 and their functions transferred to the Board of Trade (subsequently, in 1942, to the Ministry of Fuel and Power, now the Ministry of Power) and performed by the Gas Testing Branch.