THE OWNER of an iconic Penarth house that has fallen into disrepair has been fined more than £3,000 for failing to comply with an enforcement notice to carry out necessary building work.

Michael Boland, 78, changed his plea to guilty on the day that he appeared at Cardiff and Vale Magistrates Court.

He had been accused of failing to comply with a Vale of Glamorgan Council enforcement notice for the once-grande Normandy house on Bridgeman Road.

The building has deteriorated rapidly over the last few years and is now boarded up in a derelict condition without a roof and with vegetation growing out of the chimneys.

Boland was due to stand trial accused of failing to comply with a notice served by the Vale of Glamorgan Council on May 2, 2012, under section 215 of the Town and County Planning Act 1990, to carry out the work within four months.

He had been ordered to remove all window boards and replace all damaged or rotten window frames and glazing, replace or remove damaged or missing roof slate, and remove all vegetation from the building.

He was charged with failing to comply with the enforcement notice after Vale Council officers surveyed the building on January 2, 2014.

Boland, of Hickman Road in Penarth, was fined £600 and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £60 and costs of £2500 by July 16, 2014.

A planning application to demolish the building, the fourth made by Boland, was rejected by the Vale Council in February last year on the grounds that “the building is identified as being a ‘positive building’ within the Conservation Area that makes a special contribution to the special architectural and historic interest of the Penarth Conservation Area”.

It added “that there is not considered to be sufficient justification in favour of the demolition of the building”.

Planning permission was approved in February 2005 to restore the main house into three apartments and to build side and rear extensions for a further five apartments, but work has failed to progress after it appeared to begin in February 2010.

Boland has previously said in court that the foundations of the property were “structurally unsound” and that any work on the house besides a demolition project , which the council has already dismissed on several occasions already, would not be economically viable.