Shutters battle bill tops £30,000

The boss of a Wolverhampton fast food shop has ended up in the dock after a four-year legal battle over its shutters that has cost him more than £30,000.

Manazer Shah appeared before Wolverhampton Magistrates Court yesterday when he admitted two charges of failing to comply with an enforcement notice demanding he return Chicken Cottage's shop front to its original.

The saga started for Shah in August 2005 when council officials noticed that the wooden frame Georgian front of the Broad Street takeaway had been altered.

It had been replaced by a steel frame and shutters that broke planning laws in the city centre conservation area, the court heard.

Prosecutor Mr Kevin Saunders said an enforcement order was slapped on the property. Shah, from Stanmore, Middlesex, was told to make the changes by April 2007 after unsuccessfully appealing against the order but failed to meet the deadline and was prosecuted. The 35-year-old elected a crown court trial but changed his plea to guilty on the day of the hearing in January 2008 and was fined a total of £3,500 with £900 costs.

But the steel frame and shutters were still not touched and had to be torn down by council workers in May this year, landing the owner with an extra £7,000 bill, the court heard.

Mr David Pearson, defending, said that by that time, Shah was behind bars serving three-and-a-half years for an unrelated crime.

But Shah still owns the business that now has a new frontage in line with local planning laws that cost a further £20,000 loaned to him by his father, magistrates were told. He claimed that he thought he was going to get a grant to do the work and had not been able to afford it after the application was turned down.

Shah will not be considered for release from his present prison sentence until at least next May, the court was told. In the meantime, the business is being run by a manager.

The defendant claimed that it was losing money. Magistrates chairman Mr Richard Blundell gave him a conditional discharge for two years and said: "This is because you are a serving prisoner." But he ordered Shah to pay the £1,444 costs of the hearing within two months of being freed from jail.