Government Proposes Stricter Penalties for Landowners with Overgrown Properties under Health Services Amendment Bill

The government intends to hit the pockets of landowners who fail to keep their properties clean by allowing them to be overgrown with bush or have derelict structures.

Offending landowners with grass or bush on their properties that is more than two feet tall and deemed a nuisance by health authorities, will face an administrative penalty of $300 and $10 each day it remains uncleared. They will have to foot the cost of clean-up if the state is forced to undertake the process. All this will be added to the landowner’s tax bill.

Importantly, the government, which owns vast amounts of land, will also be subjected to the legislation, according to Attorney General Dale Marshall.

Marshall made the disclosure on Tuesday in the House of Assembly as he moved the second reading of the Health Services (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to expand and update the 1969 legislation.

Marshall, the St Joseph MP, told the House that complaints relating to overgrown lands was constant from residents, particularly in rural districts when the administration hosted its Parish Speaks events.

He insisted that the current legislation with small fines and administrative procedures was not a deterrence or fitted the current times. Noting that under the present law, the minister could authorise the State to take possession of the property, execute the works and then auction the land to recover the costs incurred. This he described as draconian and inappropriate.

“We needed to find a mechanism to do the clean-up and to recover the funds,” Marshall told the lower chamber. “We also recognised that the method of dragging people before the magistrates’ court to face a criminal penalty was also archaic and served to criminalise Barbadians for breaches that are administrative . . . of failing to do a particular thing.”

He added: “I don’t think that a person, whose property falls into a state of being overgrown is somebody who says I intend to cause this. . . It is a failure, a neglect but the way the law currently treats it, you are required to drag a person before the court so that they can be prosecuted for a criminal wrong and . . . you will end up with a criminal record.”

The approach which the administration was proposing is the imposition of penalties on the land tax bills of offending property owners and/or occupiers of the land.

The attorney general stressed that landowners had the option of taking cases of hardship to the Land Tax Relief Board. Moreover, he stressed that the government had no plans of going around clearing overgrown lots as the obligation remained that of the landowner.

But he noted that in cases where public health is involved, the government will step in as “a last resort” and undertake the clean-up while the costs are added to the property owner’s tax obligations.

The attorney general stressed that the proposed amendments would go before a Standing Select Committee to allow Barbadians to have their say on the amendments. (IMC1)