Commentary on Sections Part 1 - Housing Conditions Chapter 2 – Improvement Notices, Prohibition Orders and Hazard Awareness Notices Section 11: Improvement notices relating to category 1 hazards: duty of authority to serve notice
79.Subsection (1) provides that if a category 1 hazard exists on any residential premises, serving an improvement notice is one of the courses of action available to an LHA in discharging its general duty under section 5 (to take the most appropriate enforcement action to deal with such a hazard). This is only the case where the premises in respect of which the notice is to be served are not the subject of a management order made under Part 4 of the Act. An improvement notice is a notice requiring the person on whom it is served to take the remedial action specified in the notice and remedial action means the action which will remove or reduce the hazard.
80.Subsection (3) provides that remedial action may be taken in relation to any dwelling or HMO, an individual flat or multiple flats within a building, any common parts of a building containing one or more flats and any external common parts. Subsection (4) restricts remedial action in respect of the non-residential part of any premises (for example, a shop under a flat) to cases where the deficiency giving rise to the hazard is located there, and the remedial action is necessary for the health or safety of actual or potential residential occupiers.
81.Subsection (5) provides that the remedial action must, as a minimum, remove the category 1 hazard, but may go further.
82.An improvement notice may be suspended in accordance with section 14.