Clause 71 - Notification of nominated key-holders
Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Bill
10:30 am
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley, Conservative)
I have reservations about the entire issue, although I understand the Minister when he says that there is a problem. I do not want to go into too much detail about my own security, but clearly I must declare an interest, in that I have an alarm in my property in Ribble Valley. Two years ago, the alarm went off. No one had broken into the premises. It is common sense, in any event, to get someone else to hold a key, and that is what I did. I gave my key to somebody I trust and they telephoned me, because I was not in the Ribble Valley, and said ''Your alarm has been going off for the last half an hour''. They had checked the premises to ensure that nobody had intruded, and I then gave them the code to switch the alarm off.
I suspect that that often happens up and down the country as a matter of course. A homeowner will give their key to somebody they trust, particularly these days when people are out at work and the house is vacant for most of the working day, unlike 20 or 30 years ago. If people go on holiday for two weeks at a time, there may be nobody on the premises. There is common sense in giving the key to a designated person who regularly checks that the house is okay, looks to see whether there is anything urgent in the mail and feeds the goldfish, or something like that.