This Act may be cited as the Fire Brigades Amendment Act, 1908, and shall be read together with and deemed part of the Fire Brigades Act, 1908 (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act).

No application shall be made by a contributory local authority under section six of the principal Act (relating to the dissolution of Fire Boards) until a poll of the ratepayers of the district of the local authority has been taken in manner prescribed by the Local Elections and Polls Act, 1908, on a proposal to make such application, and the proposal has been duly declared to be carried.

No such proposal shall be deemed to be carried unless affirmed by a majority of the valid votes recorded.

No proposal submitted to the ratepayers of a district under section four of the principal Act or under section two of this Act shall be deemed to be carried unless at least one-third of the ratepayers of that district have validly exercised their votes in respect of that proposal.

A Fire Board may take or acquire under the Public Works Act, 1908, as for a public work, any land which may be required as a site for a fire-brigade station or as an extension of any such site, and all the provisions of the said Act shall apply to any such taking or acquisition in the same manner as if a Fire Board was a local authority within the meaning of that Act.

Section twenty of the principal Act is hereby amended by omitting from subsections four and five the words “the preceding year” wherever those words occur, and substituting therefor the words “any preceding year.”

With respect to all moneys required by a Board for the purpose of acquiring land, or of erecting buildings, or of making additions or improvements to buildings, or of purchasing plant or appliances for the equipment of any fire brigade, or of paying off any moneys lawfully borrowed by the Board, the following provisions shall apply.

The Board, instead of computing the moneys so required as part of the expenditure of the Board in manner provided by section twenty of the principal Act, may, if it thinks fit, raise those moneys by way of loan, whether on a bank overdraft or by the issue of debentures, or in such other manner as the Board thinks fit.

No money shall be so borrowed by a Board except with the consent in writing of the Minister.

Save in the case of a loan raised for the purpose of paying off a previous loan, the powers vested in a Board by this section shall not be so exercised that the total amount of money so borrowed and for the time being unpaid exceeds at any time the sum of ten thousand pounds.

Section twenty-five of the principal Act is hereby repealed.

Section forty-nine of the principal Act is hereby amended by adding thereto the following subsections:—