TABLE Floor area of room Number of persons 110 sq.ft. or more 2 90 sq.ft. or more but less than 110 sq.ft. 1.5 70 sq.ft. or more but less than 90 sq.ft. 1 50 sq.ft. or more but less than 70 sq.ft. 0.5 Floor area of room Number of persons 110 sq.ft. or more 2 90 sq.ft. or more but less than 110 sq.ft. 1.5 70 sq.ft. or more but less than 90 sq.ft. 1 50 sq.ft. or more but less than 70 sq.ft. 0.5
Housing Bill
11:00 am
Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)
We will have the opportunity to discuss complaints in due course. I understand my hon. and learned Friend's misgiving about the character of official complaints and their sources—I asked one or two questions about that. The continued presence of the reference to JPs and to parish and community councils is in response to Select Committee recommendations. We were not necessarily minded to continue that format.
Nevertheless, let me reassure my hon. and learned Friend by pointing out that complaints are not restricted to official complainants. Members of Parliament can register a complaint. However, in practice, they will be sent to a local authority by the individuals concerned. All experience suggests that local authorities and environmental health officers are, generally speaking, very responsive to such complaints. In my experience as a Member of Parliament, I have never had a complaint about a failure to respond to a complaint. However, I have heard complaints that perhaps the environmental health officer was not sufficiently sympathetic.
The thrust of my remarks is that the complaint may be extended from any source. We would certainly expect there to be an immediate response, particularly to a complaint about a life-threatening situation. As my hon. and learned Friend will know from her legal background, we cannot write into legislation a guarantee that the local authority will respond, but we will expect it to do so none the less. Once a complaint is registered, we will expect the environmental health officer to enter the premises—we have made provision for that—and to examine the object of the complaint.
The emergency provisions allow for immediate action to be undertaken by the local authority in certain circumstances, such as if there were no other obvious responsible person in a position to carry out the necessary action. An example would be the case of the discovery of exposed live wires in a building, which would obviously be very dangerous. I suppose that the first recourse would be to check out the landlord of the premises, but if there were a problem with doing so, the local authority would move in and deal with the business itself.