APPEAL TO COUNTY COURT AGAINST CERTAIN NOTICES UNDER S. 19 (Hansard, 10 May 1976)

§ Mr. Guy Barnett
I beg to move Amendment No. 46, in page 23, line 32, leave out from 'either' to end of subsection and insert: '(a) quash the notice to which the appeal relates; or (b) modify the notice so that, instead of imposing its requirements on the appellant, it imposes them upon another person who is an owner or occupier of the relevant place in question; or (c) order that the appellant be entitled to recover from such a person a specified part of the expenses incurred by the appellant in complying with the notice; or (d) dismiss the appeal; but the court shall not be entitled to exercise its powers under paragraph (b) or (c) of this subsection unless a ground of the appeal is that mentioned in paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of this section.
(3A) Where the court modifies a notice in pursuance of paragraph (b) of the preceding subsection the notice shall be deemed to be served in pursuance of the preceding section on the other person in question on the date on which the modification is made; but that person shall not be entitled to appeal against the notice in pursuance of this section.'.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this we are to take Government Amendments Nos. 47, 48 and 55.

§ Mr. Barnett
These amendments recast the court's powers under Clause 30(3). In doing so they broaden its powers by authorising the court to alter the terms of the notice served by a local authority under Clause 19, so that another owner or occupier of the property is required to comply with the notice. The amendments also restrict the exercise of the court's power so to alter the notice, or to order the person served with the notice to recover part of his expenses from another owner or occupier of the property, to cases where the person served with the notice appealed on the grounds that it would have been fairer if the notice had 125 been served on another owner or occupier of the property.
The purpose of the amendments is principally to enable the court to order compliance with the notice by another owner or occupier instead of the appellant. As the clause stands, the court is limited to ordering that other owner or occupier to pay to the appellant the cost of compliance, which would leave the appellant in the onerous position of having to lay out money on work which the court considered to be the responsibility of another and to recover the cost if he could.
The amendments also add a further subsection (3A) to subsection (3) which provides that where the court exercises its power to alter the notice pursuant to subsection (3)(b), the other owner or occupier on whom the requirements of the notice are imposed is to be deemed to have been served with the notice and is to have no right of appeal.
Where the court exercises its power under subsection (3)(b), the other owner or occupier will have been made a respondent to the appeal and will have had a chance of airing his case before the court. There is, therefore, no purpose in requiring the local authority to reserve the notice in its altered form on the other owner or occupier, and the other owner or occupier should not have the right to come back to the court on the very issue which the court will have determined when making its order under subsection (3)(b).