Brisbane City Council will pursue the owners of an East Brisbane property after the character home on the block of land was demolished, despite being protected.
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While a private certifier had approved the demolition of a recent extension to the Stafford Street home on April 8, the council became aware of its complete demolition in May.
Records show the property was sold to Nomad Investment Fund Pty Ltd in December for $913,000.
City planning chairman Julian Simmonds said the council intended to take legal action against the property owner, which could see them fined up to $196,137.
Cr Simmonds said character was an important part of Brisbane and the council would take action against any individual who illegally demolished character homes without approval.
"We will throw the book at anyone who tries to flout laws around character and heritage, this is completely unacceptable," he said.
"Council added an additional 35,000 properties to traditional building character overlays during City Plan 2014 and identified an additional 400 pre-1911 homes for protection."
Local Greens councillor Jonathan Sri (The Gabba) said he was pleased the council was taking action, but said the demolition was symptomatic of wider problems in Brisbane's heritage protection regime.
"As a general rule, I'd like to see these rules to protect heritage to be enforced more consistently and in a more timely manner," he said.
"There's probably a sentiment in some sectors of the construction industry that you can break the rules and ask for forgiveness later.
"The debate around the protection of heritage housing in Brisbane lacks nuance – people deploy arguments that we can't protect every old house that's sitting around and we need to have development and new housing.
"That's all true but if a house is designated as being worthy of protection then we should protect it.
Cr Sri said housing was treated like a "commodity" in Brisbane.
"As long as there is profit to be made by violating those rules, then developers are going to do it," he said.
"We need to shift from housing being treated purely as a commodity and that requires great investment in public housing, social housing and affordable housing."
