A local council has ordered an end to the circus surrounding a candy-striped Kensington and Chelsea multimillion-pound townhouse, telling its owner to remove the big top-style design which is believed to have been painted to infuriate her neighbours.

The eight-inch red-and-white stripe paint job on the townhouse, described by one neighbour as hideous, was carried out after residents on South End, a quiet cul-de-sac, objected to plans to demolish the building and replace it with a new house and two-storey basement.

Using an order usually reserved to force owners to clean up derelict or shabby properties, Kensington and Chelsea council has told owner Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring that she must repaint the garish design back to its original white.

A section 215 notice is normally deployed when a property’s “condition adversely affects the amenity of the area”. Homeowners do usually have a right to paint their houses any colour they like, under the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995, as long as the property is not a listed building.

“It is unusual [to use a section 215 order], but this house is situated in a conservation area and it can be used when one building affects the tone of the whole neighbourhood,” councillor Timothy Coleridge, the council’s lead member for planning, told the Guardian.

“You do have the right to paint your house any colour you like, in Notting Hill for example people do sometimes paint their houses bright orange and neighbours object but they have a perfect right to do so,” he said. “But this has been done, so I understand, not because she likes the stripes, but purely to infuriate her neighbours.

“This is Britain, after all, so we’re not going to get ridiculously heavy handed about it. But this is a warning shot across the bow.”

A council spokesman said: “A section 215 notice has been served, under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, on the owner of a property in South End by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

“The property is situated within the Kensington Square conservation area and its condition and appearance has attracted numerous complaints to the council’s planning enforcement team. In addition to the exterior being painted in red and white stripes, the property’s window frames are in a poor condition.”

“The owner has the right to appeal the notice by 5 June in the magistrates courts but, if no appeal is forthcoming, the owner must repaint the front elevation white and carry out repairs to the windows by 3 July.

“If the notice is not complied with by 3 July then the council can enter the property and carry out the necessary works. Furthermore the council can charge the owner for the costs in carrying out the works and prosecute them in the magistrates courts.”

Saskia Moyle, 18, who lives across the road with her father, said she was shocked when she came home to discover men painting the house. “I went out for dinner one evening about a month ago and when I came back there were people on ladders painting it,” she said earlier this month. “They didn’t finish one of the stripes because as soon as I arrived they got off the ladders and left.

“I don’t think it belongs here. It kind of glows in the evening. It’s fluorescent. And the half finished stripe is driving me mad. It drives me insane.

“It’s very fluorescent and very garish. Without sounding very pretentious, it isn’t very Kensington. It’s more Camden or something like that.”