219Powers to enter land, take steps required by maintenance of land notice and recover costs(1)

If the period within which a maintenance of land notice requires any step to be taken, or a longer period allowed by the planning authority that issued the notice, has ended and the step has not been taken, the planning authority may—

(a)

at any reasonable time enter the land to which the notice relates and take the step, and

(b)

recover from a person who is then an owner of the land the costs it reasonably incurs in doing so.

(2)

If a planning authority seeks to recover costs under subsection (1)(b) from an owner of land who—

(a)

is entitled to receive the rack rent of the land merely as agent or trustee for another person (the “principal”), and

(b)

does not have, and has not had at any time since the day payment of the costs was demanded, enough money on behalf of the principal to pay the costs in full,

the liability of the agent or trustee is limited to the total amount of money that the agent or trustee has had on behalf of the principal since that day.

(3)

If subsection (2) prevents a planning authority recovering the whole of its costs from an agent or trustee, it may recover them from the principal, or partly from the principal and partly from the agent or trustee.

(4)

Where a copy of a maintenance of land notice has been served—

(a)

costs that an owner or occupier of the land incurs for the purpose of complying with the notice, and

(b)

amounts that an owner of the land pays under subsection (1)(b) in respect of costs incurred by the planning authority in taking steps required by the notice,

are to be treated as incurred or paid for the use and at the request of any person who caused or permitted the land to be in the condition in which it was when the notice was issued.

(5)

The costs recoverable by a planning authority under subsection (1) are, until recovered, a charge on the land to which the maintenance of land notice relates.

(6)

The charge takes effect as a local land charge at the beginning of the day after the day the authority completes the steps to which the costs relate.

(7)

Subsection (8) applies where—

(a)

a planning authority removes materials from land in the course of taking steps required by a maintenance of land notice, and

(b)

the owner of the materials does not, within 3 days after the day they are removed, claim the materials and take them away.

(8)

The planning authority—

(a)

may sell the materials, and

(b)

if it does so, must pay the proceeds to the person who owned the materials, after deducting any costs recoverable by it from the person.