Debate contribution: Dilapidation Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Andrew Muir on 16 June 2026.

MLA

Mr Andrew Muir

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

16 June 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Dilapidation Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5623812

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the Member for his intervention and for outlining that issue. I have received a number of items of correspondence and questions for written answer about that invasive species and my responsibility to act. The key issue is identifying the landowner. I will write to the Member to set out the law. There is an obligation to address that issue, and I know how it can affect properties. Through the Bill, we are seeking to give councils increased powers to act, while recognising that those powers are discretionary. Councils will decide to exercise their powers in cases in which they have confidence in their ability to trace the owner of the building. As I said, I will write to the Member to set out the law, because it is an important issue, about which people are concerned. Amendment Nos 23 and 24 will make minor amendments to clause 17 to clarify that a council's functions as they relate to heritage sites are:

"For the purposes of this Act".

Amendment Nos 25 and 26 are to clause 18. Clause 18 gives councils various powers of entry relating to their functions under the Bill. The amendments were requested by councils and will give them an additional power similar to that which is provided in section 177 of the Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011, whereby a warrant may be sought from a lay magistrate where entry has been refused. Councils must have the power to enter by force in cases of emergency. Amendment Nos 27 and 28 are to clause 19. Clause 19 provides for a discretionary fixed penalty to be offered by councils to discharge liability for conviction for a breach of a maintenance notice and for a failure to provide information without reasonable excuse. The amendments are necessary in order to make it clear that the fixed penalty to discharge liability for conviction for a failure to comply with the maintenance notice is up to the date of payment of the fixed penalty. If, however, the person continues to fail to comply with the maintenance notice after they have paid the fixed penalty, it does not affect the criminal liability for continued failure to comply with the maintenance notice after that date. In other words, the amendments will make it clear that payment of a fixed penalty does not mean that a person does not have to comply with the terms of a maintenance notice. Amendment No 29 will make a minor amendment to clause 21 as a result of the amendments to clause 19. Clause 21 currently provides that there is nothing to prevent a different notice being served in the case of land where an earlier notice applied, such as in cases in which dilapidation has become worse and a stronger notice would therefore be more appropriate. The amendment will allow the same notice to be served, meaning that, where a maintenance notice has been served but a fixed penalty notice was issued to discharge liability for conviction, and no remedial works were carried out, the council can issue a fresh maintenance notice. Amendment No 30 is to clause 25. It is consequential to the renaming of the "defective premises notice" provided for in clause 11 and substitutes references to "defective premises notice" in clause 25. Amendment No 31 is also an amendment to clause 25 and has resulted from proposed new clause 28A in amendment No 35, which Daniel McCrossan tabled. I seek guidance from the top Table on whether I am permitted to address Daniel's amendments now or should do so in my winding-up speech.

I will address his amendments at the end of my opening remarks, if that is OK. I will speak to my amendments first, after which I will address Daniel McCrossan's amendments.

Amendment No 32, which will insert new clause 28A, was proposed by the AERA Committee. I was pleased to accept it, as it will ensure that an initial review of how the Act has been working in practice will take place no later than three years after the Act comes into operation. Thereafter, there will be a review every five years, the terms of which will be set out in regulations, which are to be made at a future date. Similar provisions exist in the Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011. Amendment No 36 is to schedule 1 and is consequential to the changes to clause 19 that are proposed in amendment Nos 27 and 28. Paragraph 7 of schedule 1 requires a small amendment in order to make it subject to the amended clause 19. Those are my amendments. I will now address Daniel McCrossan's amendments. I then have a few summing-up remarks to make before we continue the debate. I do not propose to support the amendments that Daniel McCrossan has tabled, and I urge the Assembly to do likewise. Amendment No 33 proposes a new clause on the periodic review of dilapidated buildings etc. It seeks to impose a statutory requirement on my Department to appoint a person or body to conduct a periodic review of dilapidated buildings. The most appropriate bodies to conduct any review of the level of dilapidation in an area are councils. Their officers are on the ground every day, and they are aware of the problem buildings and neglected sites in their areas. My Department does not have operational responsibility in that area or the relevant technical expertise in key matters such as structural engineering and building safety. Appointing an outside body — at a significant cost to the public purse, I might add — would not represent value for money. It would also risk duplication of work and poor use of public funding, with councils maintaining their own records. A centralised assessment of that nature would place practical limitations as it would be too restrictive to take account of the flexibility in the legislation to enable individual councils to determine what they consider to be dilapidated, dangerous and so on. I will highlight to Members that the Bill initially contained a clause that would have imposed a statutory duty on councils to carry out a survey of the levels of dilapidation in their areas within 18 months of the commencement of the Act. Following the survey, councils would then have had a duty to compile, maintain and publish a register of the buildings and land identified during the survey. The Department recognised that that would have placed a significant burden on councils, and the clause was removed as the Department was keen that no additional statutory duties were placed on councils, and, of course, the Bill does not do so. That is not to say that councils should not compile relevant information in their areas to enable them to carry out work to tackle dilapidation, but it should be at the discretion of each individual council as to whether it does so. Amendment No 34 proposes a new clause on an accessible register of action taken. I do not support amendment No 34 and urge Members to join me in that. The amendment seeks to place a statutory burden on councils by requiring them to establish, maintain and publish a register of action taken under the legislation. As I just touched on, the same argument as to why the Department dropped a clause that would have placed a statutory duty on councils to conduct a survey and maintain registers is also appropriate in the case of amendment No 34. When drafting the Bill, the Department was quite clear that no additional statutory duties would be placed on councils. The amendment, if carried, would have the potential to create significant additional burdens for councils. If members of the public or elected representatives, for that matter, wish to know what action councils have taken under the new legislation, they can go through the usual channels to request that information. The two minor amendments are amendment Nos 31 and 35 to clauses 25 and 30. They are predicated on the proposed new clauses, and, in asking Members to reject amendment Nos 33 and 34, those would fall, but the Speaker will guide them with regard to the protocol associated with that. We can have a discussion around this, but I will close with the responsibilities of councils arising from the legislation. It is important to take a perspective in relation to that. The Dilapidation Bill, which we are debating here today at Consideration Stage, will consolidate and modernise outdated Victorian legislation to help regenerate our cities, towns and villages by giving councils the power to better tackle the blight of dilapidation. There has been significant and sustained engagement with local government on the Bill, helping to shape robust, fit-for-purpose legislation that grants councils discretionary powers equivalent to those now long established in Great Britain and Ireland. As Minister, I value the constructive relationship that has been fostered with councils, and I am grateful for the extensive engagement by local government throughout the earlier policy consultation process and, again, since work restarted on the Bill following restoration of devolved government in 2024 and the introduction of the Bill to the Assembly in June 2025. I, along with my senior leadership team and officials who have been working directly on the Bill, have met council representatives on multiple occasions, and four local government-sponsored amendments have been tabled to strengthen the Bill, including new provisions on costs and warrants to access properties. Although proposed changes that could potentially make the Bill inoperable are not being taken forward by the Department, they will instead be addressed by statutory guidance as in other parts of the UK. The Assembly's Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee undertook thorough scrutiny of the Bill as part of an extended Committee Stage. I thank the Committee for its work, which involved several briefings from the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA), and its report, which indicated that the Committee was content to proceed to the Consideration Stage. Dilapidation policy in Northern Ireland has been in development since 2015, with work on the Bill being undertaken continuously over the past two years. That work has culminated in the current draft of the Bill, which includes new discretionary powers to issue maintenance notices to tackle low-level dilapidation. The powers are already available in England, Scotland and Wales, and councils in Northern Ireland supported the powers in their response to the public policy consultation. The Bill does not impose new statutory duties or financial burdens on councils. Rather, it gives councils the flexibility to use the new powers, as resources permit. There are extensive new cost recovery mechanisms and a requirement for DAERA to publish statutory guidance in order to give greater clarity than exists in the present set-up. The Department will continue to work with local government to develop the guidance, which will include terminology, definitions and thresholds. Hardwiring that into the Bill could inhibit use of the legislation, and that is why I have proposed amendments at Consideration Stage today.

1,835 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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