House to House Collections Act 1939

Introduction by CharityBags

Headings on this page :

Explanatory notes
- Source (Statutes in Force)
- Revision date (1977)
- Waiving of Crown copyright © by HMSO
- Production (by scanning)
- Contents of the Act
- Other ways of referring to the 1939 Act :
  - On the Internet - OPSI / HMSO website and the UK Statute Law Database (SLD)
  - Purchasing - from the Stationery Office (TSO)
  - Larger libraries
  - District council licensing departments
- Related documents (The 1947 Regulations)
Copy of the House to House Collections Act 1939
- All pages (total of 11)
- Individual pages

To view the 1939 Act, click on the appropriate links near the bottom of this page.

However, before looking at the Act, we suggest you glance at the Explanatory notes below.

House to House Collections Act 1939 - title page (Crown Copyright HMSO)

1. Explanatory notes

Source

We've produced the pages from the Act by scanning photocopies of the appropriate pages of Statutes in Force - see the Acts and Regulations page for details of this publication.

Revision date

The edition which we copied states it was revised to 1st November 1977 (and was published in 1978).

So :

It doesn't include any amendments made by Parliament since late 1977.

But :

It gives a good general idea of the Act.
It incorporates the major changes enacted in 1974 when district councils took over from the police as the licensing authorities (except in London).
As far as we know, there have only been minor changes made to the Act since 1977 - such as the maximum level of fines.

Waiving of Crown copyright © by HMSO

However, HMSO allow (and encourage) people to make copies of Parliamentary Acts and Regulations, subject to certain minor provisos - see the Copyright page for details.

The copy of the Act included on our website is correctly reproduced in accordance with the terms of Crown Copyright Policy Guidance issued by HMSO.

Production

Images: Our scans of the Act are stored as images. They're the equivalent of photocopies.
Authenticity: We haven't edited the images, apart from:
- cropping white space from the margins, and
- omitting the 'publisher's imprint' on the title page to comply with HMSO's Guidelines.
Border lines: For clarity, we've added a border line around each image. These lines match the cropped margins. They don't indicate the edges of the original pages.
Quality: They're more or less fax quality - in other words, readable but less than perfect - our apologies for this.
They aren't searchable, and there aren't any hypertext links.
Printing: They should print out OK, each normally fitting on one page of A4.

Contents of the Act

The Act (in the version of Statutes in Force which we used) consists of 11 pages as follows :

A title page (with the royal coat of arms)
Table of contents (entitled 'Arrangement of sections')
Pages, numbered 1 to 9

Like most UK legislation, the Act is precise, carefully worded and well laid out - but it's rather dry and difficult to understand when you first read it. Elsewhere on the website we've written a summary of parts of the Act in more digestible form.

Other ways of referring to the 1939 Act

The Internet:

Until recently, our website appeared to be the only place on the Net where you could see a copy of the Act.

However, we're pleased to say that it's now been added to two related government websites - namely OPSI and the Statute Law Database. Both sites have it in web page (HTML) format, so you can search it and copy-and-paste portions of its text. For now, we're retaining our scanned copy of the Act on the CharityBags website.
The OPSI / HMSO website Until recently this only included Acts from 1988 onwards. However it now has some older legislation too, including the 1939 Act.
The UK Statute Law Database (SLD) This includes the 1939 Act, with revisions.
Local council websites: Many of these have useful information on the Act, and some of them include the full text of the Regulations. However, so far we haven't found a copy of the Act itself on any of these websites.

Purchasing: See the Acts and Regulations page for details.

Libraries: You can see copies of the Act in the reference sections of some larger public libraries (and you can photocopy them legitimately - see the section on waived copyright above).

District council licensing departments: Most of these will be happy to show you a copy of the Act.

2. Copy of the House to House Collections Act 1939

a) All pages :

Click here to see ALL 11 PAGES of the 1939 Act
This link allows you to scroll through all the Act's pages seamlessly, using one web page.

b) Individual pages :