Stripes on Kensington house are fun and here to stay, says owner

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/12/stripes-kensington-house-fun-here-to-stay-owner

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The red and white stripes painted on a Kensington townhouse “add to the gaiety of the nation” and are here to stay, the property’s owner has said.

Defying Kensington and Chelsea council’s ruling that the beach hut-style design should be removed, Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring said she was “entitled to do what I wish with it, and there are a lot of people who agree with me. Children absolutely love it ... They are fun.”

“For most people it is cheaper to do what the wretched council wants than argue with them,” she told the Evening Standard.

The garish paint job on the multi-million-pound house on South End, a west London cul-de-sac, was carried out by a hired decorator after neighbours objected to plans to demolish it and rebuild a new house and two-storey basement with a gym, cinema and indoor pool.

Related: Kensington and Chelsea council says house stripes must go

Lisle-Mainwaring, who lives in Switzerland, was said to have ordered the stripes be painted in order to provoke her neighbours. She successfully appealed against the council’s decision to refuse planning permission, but neighbours have launched a legal challenge to be heard at the high court in June.

“It’s very fluorescent and very garish,” neighbour Saskia Moyle said of the stripes when they first appeared. “Without sounding very pretentious, it isn’t very Kensington. It’s more Camden or something like that.”

“My neighbours say they want the building kept in commercial use,” Lisle-Mainwairing said. “What they mean is they don’t want any building work going on.”

She said that she did not realise her neighbours “would get quite so excited”. “This was intended to be my final house. At this rate it may well be my sarcophagus.”

Homeowners have a right to paint their houses any colour they like, under the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995, as long as the property is not a listed building. But Kensington and Chelsea council has issued a section 215 order, used when a property’s condition “adversely affects the amenity of the area” because the property is in a conservation area.

“The joke has gone on long enough and we’d like to see the end of it now,” said councillor Timothy Coleridge, the council’s lead member for planning.

“She may think she has the right to paint it any colour but she doesn’t, not in a conservation area, and it rather supports the impression people have that she is not very neighbourly and neither does it do her case much good.

“We are not an aggressive council, but this is getting rather dull. She may tell the press that everyone around her loves the stripes, and there are always a few eccentric people who like odd things just because they are odd, but I can tell you that most people absolutely do not think that way.”

Lisle-Mainwaring has the right to appeal by 5 June in the magistrates court but otherwise must repaint the front elevation white and carry out repairs to the windows by 3 July. The council has the right to enter the property, repaint the front of the house and charge the owner for the costs, prosecuting her if she does not pay up.

Her solicitors said they had no comment to make on any further legal action that would be taken by Lisle-Mainwaring.