Clause 12 - suspension of improvement notices
Housing Bill
11:15 am
Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)
In response to the hon. Gentleman's invitation to embrace his amendments, in the immortal words of Evelyn Waugh:
''Up to a point, Lord Copper.''
Clause 12 would provide for an improvement notice to be suspended at the discretion of the local authority. For example, a notice may be suspended until such time as the current occupier ceases to occupy the premises. The notice may specify an event that will trigger the end of the suspension. Guidance on the use of suspended notices will be issued under clause 8.
I turn now to amendment No. 190 on the suspension of improvement notices, which was moved eloquently if not entirely persuasively by the hon. Gentleman. An ordinary unsuspended notice comes into operation 21 days after it is served by virtue of clause 14(2), and there are then seven further days before remedial works can be required to start by virtue of clause 11(3). The reason for the inclusion of clause 12(5)(b), which amendment No. 190 would leave out, is that in the case of a suspended notice the extra days can be dispensed with, because advance warning of the date on which suspension ends has already been given in the notice itself.
The first limb, as it were, of amendment No. 191 would relieve the person on whom an improvement notice is served of the responsibility to comply with it if he is obstructed in carrying out the necessary remedial works. Two issues are involved. The first is that the action required by the improvement notice is suspended for reasons that the local authority has already taken into account, following its assessment of the hazard and its likely impact on occupiers. It is not a reaction to an event occurring later. The second issue is that it cannot be in anyone's interest that enforcement action, which the authority will have
embarked on for good reason, should be deferred simply because the person on whom the notice is served has run into some difficulty.
Clause 28 makes it an offence to fail to comply with an improvement notice that has come into operation; but, of course, in any proceedings it is a defence if the person on whom the notice was served had reasonable excuse for failing to comply with it. In my view, that is the right balance. We need to bear in mind that the improvement notice is served to deal with a hazard from which people need protection.