Comment

Planning reforms 2020: Design and quality meet ambition and vision

Following the release of planning for the Future our Head of Design, Stephen Taylor considers the implications for design quality and welcomes codification.

The aspiration here is ambitious and visionary. Delivering well designed and sustainable places is at the heart of this paper forming one of the three main pillars. The status of good design is elevated beyond the ambition within the NPPF. Design is mentioned 81 times in a document with as many pages, the agenda of both the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister is clear.

The National Design Guide, the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission (BBBBC) Report and Building for Healthy Life, all set the stage for the autumn release of the National Model Design Guide. All guidance points to this, so the expectation is high as the Code will ultimately be the document through which the Government’s ambition will be delivered.

A national code for local people?

I believe that good design can be successfully codified. Rules of proportion, scale and material quality are as old as our earliest cities. The role of a good design guide is to articulate these rules and ensure that they are applied. Having reviewed the recent design documents released by Government I have no doubt that the National Model Code will successfully re-establish these rules, the application is reliant, however, on the interpretation of local authorities. Whilst understandable, this deferral of responsibility could see the bold ambition somewhat diluted; NIMBYism masquerading as knowledge of local vernacular.

The right characters to assess character

There is no doubt that strong design leadership within a local authority encourages better quality places. The role of the in-house designer has all but vanished in local authorities, I therefore support a body to support the delivery of design codes and the appointment of a chief officer for design and place-making within each authority. This does however, need to be the right person, with the right experience and the power to influence decision making.

Establishing an ‘expert body’ to oversee delivery of local codes sounds a little like The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). CABE did a superb job in improving design quality nationally so I would be happy to see the return of an influential design body with a diverse membership from developers, design consultancies and local authorities.

Homes England

Homes England’s emphasis on achieving increased output and best value in the development and/or disposal of land will be increasingly balanced with objectives to attain higher design quality and environmental standards.

The Government is keen to lead by example on such matters, which is a laudable objective and an anticipated outcome of endorsing many of the BBBBC recommendations.

How and who will assess and police such considerations on a consistent basis is detail to follow. So too are the parameters to be used to assess developments led by the public sector, or in land disposals from the public to the private sector. As a first step, the Government is to explore the establishment of a new expert body to assist authorities in embedding this objective down to the local level. We await further details.

Resourcing will no doubt be key to the success and implementation of such ambition. Not only at national level, but down to local level too, where dedicated in-house design teams in many LPAs need to be bolstered, or indeed, established. As ever, the devil will be in the detail, and we await the publication of further details with interest.

The race for beauty

The proposal to fast-track beauty is simply the policy mechanism to incentivise good design quality. The ‘value’ of design is talked about endlessly and a simple equation has yet been created to provide the answer. This proposal would certainly provide a financial incentive to invest in design quality, measured through the Building for Healthy Life guidance and National Model Code. This could provide certainty for developers and investors that upfront investment in design quality would deliver a return through faster delivery.

For further information on design quality and planning reforms please contact Stephen Taylor. To find out more about the future role of Homes England please contact Fran Rowley.

11 August 2020