The Act – Section by Section Part 4 – Enforcement and Scrutiny Section 27 – Excess of power: enforcement
79.Section 25 provides the Scottish Ministers with the power to direct a local authority to take specified action to remedy or prevent the recurrence of its significant excess of the power. Such a direction must be subsequent to the preliminary notice described in section 24, but does not have to be made. Subsection (2)provides that the Scottish Ministers may place conditions on the continued exercise of certain of the local authority’s functions. The Scottish Ministers may subsequently amend the direction without having to repeat the preliminary notice procedure described in section 24, and may revoke the direction at any time.
80.Subsection (7)placed local authorities under a duty to follow any direction made to them by the Scottish Ministers.
81.Subsection (8)provides that if the Scottish Ministers use their power to direct (or to vary or revoke an enforcement direction) then they must prepare a report on that use and lay any such report before the Scottish Parliament.