Islington Council action brings £60,000 in fines and costs after demolition of historic houses

The houses at 1 and 3 Hungerford Road, London, N7 9LA were Victorian four-storey semi-detached villas in the Hillmarton Conservation Area. No.3 was also a building with an English Heritage blue plaque that honoured Lillian Lindsay, Britain's first woman dentist, who had once lived at the property. The homes dated from late 1860 and retained a number of notable architectural features - in particular their original brick façade and grand traditional windows to the first floor.

Planning permission was granted in January 2017, which in effect was a façade retention scheme, subject to a number of conditions to protect the remaining elements of the property. However, instead of implementing the approved supports and frame, as required by the conditions, the developer demolished the buildings to ground floor level.

Panos Eliades and his company, Hungerstone Limited, pleaded guilty to a total of 10 offences at Highbury Court Magistrates Court on 11 December 2018 for demolishing a pair of semi-detached villas without planning permission and for failure to comply with conditions of a previous planning permission. They were ordered to pay a combined sum in fines and costs of £59,261.32.

In his sentencing remarks of 19th December 2018, District Judge Rimmer commented: "... this was at least a flagrant disregard of the planning permission, if not an intentional breach, and steps could and should have been taken to alert LBI to the Defendant's intentions before the near total demolition occurred. There was either actual foresight of, or at least wilful blindness to the risk of committing a criminal offence by going beyond the agreed planning permission. The harm is irreplaceable loss of the original villas in a Conservation Area, and the harm was an obvious and inevitable result of the Defendant's actions."

Following the court case Cllr Diarmaid Ward, Islington Council's executive member for housing & development said: "This was a clear breach of planning regulations, and we will take action to protect Islington's buildings and history from being harmed or destroyed.

"We now hope that the houses will be rebuilt in a manner which is sympathetic to their Victorian appearance - while this won't bring back the original houses, it will help bring back the look and feel of the conservation area and surrounding historic neighbourhood."

A planning application to rebuild the villas is currently being considered by the council.