Court orders owner to comply with s.215 notice and repaint striped home

A property owner who put red and white stripes on her mews house in London has been ordered to comply with a section 215 notice issued by her local authority and repaint her home.

The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea issued the notice to Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring in April last year. Her home is in the Kensington Square Conservation Area.

According to the Evening Standard, Lisle-Mainwaring denied that she had repainted her house to “get her own back” against neighbours who objected to her plans to rebuild her property.

Her appeal against the s. 215 notice was heard at Hammersmith Magistrates' Court on 15 and 16 December 2015.

Lisle-Mainwaring argued that:

• A s. 215 notice could only be used to remedy the state of repair and not to control the colour or manner that the property is painted; and
• There were other properties in the borough's conservation area that were brightly covered.

Her appeal was rejected by District Judge Susan Bayne last week (8 January). The judge said service of the notice was appropriate.

The property must be repainted white within 28 days. The judge did, however, remove a requirement in the original notice that windows at the property be repaired and replaced.

Judge Bayne added: “Visual integrity is fundamental to the Kensington Square Conservation Area. It is the visual integrity of the area as a whole that gives it its unique character. Painting a property with red and white stripes, where other properties use a limited palette of muted colours, results in an adverse effect on the amenity of the area."

Cllr Timothy Coleridge, the Royal Borough's Cabinet Member for Planning Policy, said: “We are very pleased that the court has agreed that painting a property in red and white stripes has a harmful impact on the Kensington Square Conservation Area and that issuing a section 215 Notice was within the Royal Borough’s power as the local planning authority.

“Of course we would have preferred to resolve this matter without resort to the courts but in the end this was not possible. We expect that this property will now be painted in a more suitable manner.”

Lisle-Mainwaring had previously lost a High Court bid to have Kensington & Chelsea’s revised basement policy quashed.