This article was originally published on wiglaw.co.uk

In the statutory nuisance regime, when should the Secretary of State intervene with default powers?

The alleged failure on the part of the Secretary of State to exercise her powers of intervention under Schedule 3, para.4, is asserted by Mr Gary Ball in support of an allegation that the UK government is guilty of a systemic failure to implement the statutory nuisance regime.

The admissibility of Mr Ball’s communication to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee to this effect (2025/218) will be discussed on 24 February. These are my personal views.

Mr Ball complains that after succeeding in an appeal to the Court of Appeal in 2024, which quashed variations to a previous abatement notice, a new abatement notice was served by the Council “in broadly the same style … but with weaker variations all included”.

On 22 April 2025, Mr Ball wrote to the SoS asking her to direct that the Council should adopt his own adviser’s draft abatement notice and that the Council “takes effective and immediate action to enforce that notice”.

The default powers under Schedule 3 have never been used. The relevant trigger is connected with the function of the local authority to exercise its “duty under s.79 to cause its area to be inspected to detect any statutory nuisance which ought to be dealt with …”. If that function is not discharged, then the SoS can make an order to that effect and direct the authority to perform its function and the manner in which the function is to be performed (see para.4(1)-(3)).

Only if the authority fails to comply with such an order can the SoS step in and transfer the function to herself (para.4(4)).

In Mr Ball’s case, the Council had exercised this function, even if the abatement notice which the Council issued is not satisfactory to Mr Ball. The scope of the power to intervene is a narrow one.

This complaint does not support the alleged systemic failure to implement the statutory nuisance regime.

At the time of writing, registration to this first meeting of the Compliance Committee was still open: https://lnkd.in/eTg9muvg