A director and a Lancaster company have been sentenced for breaches of planning law at a prominent building at the gateway to the city.
Zubeir Mister was ordered to pay a fine of £5,000 and a £128 victim surcharge - and received a four-month custodial sentence, suspended for 18 months, alongside a community order of 250 hours unpaid work, during sentencing at Preston Magistrates Court.
This was in relation to breaches of planning and listed building control at the former Alexandra Hotel on Penny Street, Lancaster.
The company 107 Penny Street Ltd - of which Mister, 49, of Standen Park in Lancaster, is a director - was ordered to pay a fine of £54,000 and a £190 victim surcharge.
Lancaster City Council’s costs, to the sum of £17,319.77, were ordered to be paid jointly by both defendants.
The Grade II listed building has been the subject of internal and external works, which Lancaster City Council argued did not have the benefit of the required consents.
The charges related to the company’s breach of Section 7 and Section 9 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, and a breach of a Listed Building Enforcement Notice served by the city council.
Mr Mister was charged with two offences - executing the demolition/alteration/extension of the building which affected its historic character, and failure to comply with a listed building enforcement notice.
Earlier this year the council also secured an order from the courts preventing the company and Mr Mister from carrying out works to the property that would affect its character as a building of special architectural or historic interest.
The order also instructed the defendants to carry out works to the property in order to reinstate it to the condition that it was in on June 1 2020.
Alexandra Hall was built in 1902 as the Alexandra Hotel, and was most recently home to a Revolution bar, which closed in 2014, and prior to that, The Alex pub and nightspot, and The Catholic Social Club. It has been empty for several years.
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