Civil Penalties

The Housing and Planning Act 2016 gave Councils new powers to issue civil penalties as an alternative to court prosecution for specified offences.

The Council has considered guidance issued by the government and proposes to use these powers where it is considered appropriate. The enforcement procedure used by the Housing Standards department has been updated to reflect these powers. This procedure specifies when these powers should be used, the process to be followed and the amount of the penalty to be imposed.

A Civil Penalty can be issued for the following offences:-

• Failure to comply with an Improvement Notice (Section 30)
• Offences in relation to licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation (section 72)
• Offences in relation to licensing of houses under Part 3 of the Act (section 95)
• Offences of contravention of an overcrowding notice (section 139)
• Failure to comply with management regulations in respect of Houses in Multiple Occupation (section 234)

The amount of this penalty must not exceed £30,000.

Further details of this process can be found by viewing the Housing Standards Enforcement Procedure, and Locally Adopted Charges documents.  Both documents can be found on the 'About Housing Standards' webpage.