Hi Fiona

The only legislation that allows you to charge for service of Notice is the Housing Act 2004, Section 49.

 Your enforcement policy would have to specify that you  can charge for service of notices. Some LA have a mximum of £300, which was based on the the old Housing Act 1985 maximum.

However, my advice to LA would be to avoid specifying a maximum level, just state in the policy that you will recover your reasonable costs incurred. The reason for this is if you need a structural engineers report as part of your assessment and you specify a maximum of £300, you are going to be out of pocket, most structural engineers reports will cost between £600-£800, plus Officers time.

If Officers record their time fully, they should be able to achieve at least £500, if they have had to obtain a warrant to enter etc.

Whether you specify a maximum level or not, the LA need to be able to justify their costs if appealed to the RPT.

Therefore, record time spent, hourly rate, task undertaken, date, mileage etc

As far as the enforced sales procedure is concerned, I believe that you should be able to recover all your costs from the point that the LA decide to proceed with works in default including:

Re-inspection including warrant access etc

Recording, photographs/dvd of property before and after works

Obtain 3 quotes for the work

Review Quotes, appoint contractor

Monitor Contractor

Final Inspection and sign off

Draft demand letter and demand, service of the demand, mileage, meetings with legal etc etc.

Once you proceed to the sale of the property, then all your costs including legal, auctioneers, Surveyors, Officers time will be recoverable. But it is important that LA record Officers time against the file rather than do it retrospectively when they get to that point.

Just another point if you are taking a prosecution

When the Council is seeking an award of costs by the Court it is essential for all relevant costs to be clearly identified. All officer time spent on a case, from the time that an offence is suspected or known to have occurred, must therefore be clearly recorded. All other related expenditure, such as the cost of producing photographic evidence, must also be clearly recorded, and, where appropriate, receipts must be obtained. This includes admin time in typing notices, photocopying, service of documents, by personal service or by recorded delivery post etc. Any conference or meetings with Council’s legal team, telephone conversations internally or externally to the Council relating to the matter i.e. with the defendant or his legal representative can be legitimately claimed should be included. LA’s are required by rules deriving from the Associated Octel judgement to serve the schedule of costs on the defendant at the earliest opportunity.

Fiona

As always Andrew has covered all the points and I totally agree with them.

The reality of recording every minute of course is a right pain and can often add many more hours to the already lengthy process and the actual recording is never popular by staff who want to be out there actually doing the job!

Here at RBKC have a set fee of £420 for a 'standard' Improvement Notice under 2004 Housing Act. You will need to have this included in your Enfiorcement Policy documentation and I suggest with a clause which lets you increase in annually in line with RPI or similar.

The thought is that some may be a bit quicker to prepare some longer but some you win some you loose but its a lot less hassle than recording every minute.  Clearly the figure needs to be 'reasonable and proportunate' and defendable if asked to clarify and breakdown the exact costs by RPT/Court etc.

Strangely we cant charge for Section 215 Notices though.

We charge for my time and legal costs etc during enforced sale procedures.

Like Andrew, I calculate my time as I go along and Finance have given me an hourly rate for this, so that calculation of the total is simple. Legal calculate their costs in the same way as I do.

If folk fail to respond to the 'we want to help you' approach we then look to start charging for preparation and service of Notices by logging officer time and applying their hourly rate.

We charge time and costs for getting prices for and supervising works in default.

(You could also charge mileage for the service of notices at the premises.)

There is a school of thought that proposes a straight percentage charge on the costs of works in default - suggested at 30% - but I'm not sure how that would stand up to a robust challenge.