A Brighton home owner has been ordered to restore the historic curved bay windows to his North Laine house.
Graham Jasper, of Cheltenham Place, will have to pay for the work to his terraced home himself after the ruling from the Planning Inspectorate.
Mr Jasper demolished the old bay windows at number 13 – the last original examples in Cheltenham Place – despite being refused planning permission to replace them three years ago.
He wanted to replace them with uPVC windows and appealed against the decision by Brighton and Hove City Council but lost.
Since then he has taken out the old curved bays and replaced them with angle-canted ones and swapped the windows for plastic ones.
He was told to stop the work by council planning officers but pressed ahead so they issued an enforcement notice.
Mr Jasper’s case was examined by planning inspector Katie Peerless who ordered him to restore the property’s original look.
It is in a conservation area.
Her report said that while some other properties had angled bay windows, Mr Jasper’s property had different proportions to the other bays in the street and therefore no historical precedent.
Early photographs of the property show that it originally had unusual curved sash windows, one above the other on each floor, forming a rounded bay.
The inspector added that the demolished bay was the last original survivor of an interesting and unusual design in the street.
She said that its loss was the kind of development that the council’s planning regulations were intended to prevent.
Councillor Lynda Hyde, chairman of Brighton and Hove’s planning committee, said: “I am pleased that the Planning Inspectorate has supported the enforcement notice and dismissed the appeal.
“This action shows that we are keen to protect and maintain the conservation areas within the city.
“Unfortunately because Mr Jasper did not listen to advice to stop building work at an early stage he now has the expense of remedying this breach of planning control.
“As ever I would encourage residents to gain planning approval before carrying out building work and to make use of the free pre-application service the planning department offers.”
The planning inspector who ruled against Mr Jasper in 2007 said that his proposed windows were inappropriate to the style and period of the building and detrimental to the street scene.
Mr Jasper must
- Remove the angle-canted bay window from the front of the property
- Remove the uPVC windows from the front
- Reinstate the round bay as original
- Reinstate the paired curved single-glazed painted timber sash windows to match exactly the original.
