Housing Act 1957

30 Payments in respect of condemned houses which have been well maintained

(1) Within three months of the service by a local authority under section nineteen of this Act of a copy of a demolition order or of a notice of their determination to purchase a house any person may represent to them that the house has been well maintained and that the good maintenance of the house is attributable wholly or partly to work carried ovit by him or at his expense.

(2) This section shall apply to a closing order made under the proviso to subsection (1) of section seventeen of this Act as it applies to a demolition order.

(3) If—

(a) the house is vacated in pursuance of the demolition or closing order or purchased compulsorily in pursuance of the notice, and

(b) leaving out of account any defects in the house in respect of any such matters as are mentioned in paragraphs (b) to (h) of subsection (1) of section four of this Act, the representation made as respects the house is correct,

the local authority shall make to the person by whom the representation was made in respect of the house such payment, if any, as is authorised by Part I of the Second Schedule to this Act.

(4) If, on receiving the representation, the local authority consider that the condition specified in paragraph (b) of the last foregoing subsection is not satisfied they shall serve on the person by whom the representation was made notice that no payment falls to be made to him under that subsection.

(5) Any person aggrieved by a notice under the last foregoing subsection may, within twenty-one days after the date of the service of the notice, appeal to the county court within the jurisdiction of which the house to which the notice relates is situated, and on the appeal to the county court the judge may make such order either confirming or quashing or varying the notice as he thinks fit:

Provided that if the persons who would be entitled to appear and be heard on such an appeal so agree in writing any matter in dispute which might have been the subject of such an appeal shall instead be submitted to arbitration.

(6) For the purposes of this section a house which might have been the subject of a demolition order under this Part of this Act but which has without the making of such an order been vacated and demolished in pursuance of an undertaking for its demolition given to the local authority shall be deemed to have been vacated in pursuance of a demolition order made and served at the date when the undertaking was given.

(7) In this section references to a demolition order do not include such an order in respect of a house already subject to a closing order so far as it affects any part of the house in relation to which a payment under this section or under the Second Schedule to this Act has fallen to be made in respect of the closing order.