Primary schools have been waiting in line for their turn to access the government’s billion pound schools renewal programme. Their own £7 billion programme is not due to get underway until April 2009 but this week the DfES named 23 local authorities across England as pathfinders to trial new approaches to state-of-the-art eco-friendly classrooms and facilities.

A new cash injection of £150m is being made available for the pilot projects, which will be undertaken during 2008-09. Priorities will also include better school kitchens and modernised sports, music and ICT facilities.

The main programme will then go on to rebuild or remodel 8,000 of England’s 18,000 primary and primary special schools, taking 900 of the worst schools out of use in the process.

The DfES set out its proposals earlier this year in its prospectus Every Child Matters: Primary School Programme. In the light of the positive response to consultation, the DfES says implementation will be broadly in line with the principles and timescales given in this prospectus, which can be found at the dfes website 

‘Most primary schools are reaching the end of their design lives – they are over 25 years old and some 60 per cent were built between 1945 and 1976, often using rapid but poor quality construction techniques,’ says schools minister Jim Knight. ‘This is about moving from simply patching and mending these aging buildings to having a strategic, joined up approach to planning and design.’

The 23 authorities named as pathfinders this week are: Barnet, Birmingham, Bradford, Cornwall, Darlington, Ealing, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Knowsley, Manchester, Newham, North Tyneside, Nottingham City, Rotherham, Sheffield, Solihull, Somerset, Swindon, Torbay, Waltham Forest and Wigan.

I’ve had a couple of comments from staff about the colour scheme for the blog, but before we change anything I thought it would be best to open up the topic to discussion.

Come on folks, we’re a company of designers, what do you really think? What would you like to see change? There is a link just below this post that says how many comments have been left so far; click on the link and log in to add your own comment. 

Key elements of the updated RIBA Quality Management Toolkit, which is being revised to support the Chartered Practice Scheme, were posted on the RIBA web site this week.

While not complete, the presence of the new RIBA Project Quality Plan for Small Projects and the associated Short Form Project Quality Plan means that small practices now have access to those parts of the toolkit needed to put project-based quality management systems in place and so satisfy Chartered Practice requirements. Also published this week is the Overview, which explains the Toolkit approach to quality management.

The RIBA took a decision to discriminate between small practices (defined as up to 10 staff in total), which will be allowed to follow a project-based approach, and medium practices (up to 50 staff), which will have to use the full QM Toolkit to qualify for Chartered Practice status. Large practices of 50 staff or more will be expected to have an externally-certified BS EN ISO9000-2000 system in place.

The new guides are available in the member’s area of the RIBA web site, under RIBA Guides. The remaining documents (Quality Manual, Procedures Manual and Guidance) will be posted in the near future.

The government has told planning authorities that there will be no radical shake-up of the planning enforcement regime next year when new guidance will be published. The current enforcement regime has been the subject of a major review, but the review has concluded that there is still strong support for the current statutory framework.

Recommendations from the review published this week include the principle that enforcement should remain at the discretion of the planning authority. Other areas of no change include no widening of the scope of planning fees to include charge for enforcement, no change to the principle of allowing retrospective planning permission, no proposal to make development without permission (or breach of consent) an offence, and no change to the existing arrangement that there is no right of appeal against a breach of condition notice.

In fact the only significant change to have emerged from the review to date is the introduction of the Temporary Stop Notice (TSN), which figures show was used over 300 times last year. New regulations and guidance are now promised on TSNs ahead of new TSN provisions that will come into effect as a result of the 2004 Planning Act.

The Appeal Court, however, has just taken a tough line on enforcement in concluding one resident’s fight against loss of light, issuing what is seen as a potential landmark judgement to demolish part of the offending development.

The claimant had protested against the replacement of two- and three-storey buildings by a five storey mixed-use scheme some five months before the development reached its full height. The High Court subsequently awarded £5,000 to the claimant in place of an injunction to prevent infringement.

Overturning the ruling, the Appeal Court said that the High Court had been wrong to place the onus on the claimant to demonstrate why damages should not be awarded as an alternative to an injunction. Other notable parts of the ruling were that it was the amount of light left after development that was the primary consideration, rather than the amount of light lost, and the view that the developer had taken a ‘calculated risk’ in pressing ahead with the scheme in full knowledge of the complaint.

The most notable element of the judgement, however, was that part of the development must be demolished despite the serious effect this will have on the developer’s plans.

A commentary on the judgement of Regan v Paul Properties DPF No 1 Ltd is at http://www.lawreports.co.uk/WLRD/2006/CACIV/oct1.1.htm

The DCLG’s Review of planning enforcement: Summary of Recommendations is at http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1504355

Expert witnesses have been enjoying a rare immunity from any proceedings against them, whether civil action in the courts or disciplinary action from their professional regulatory bodies. This situation arose following a successful High Court appeal by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow against the General Medical Council’s 2005 decision to strike him off the register for giving ‘misleading’ evidence in a high profile cot death trial.

Immunity from civil actions over evidence given by expert witnesses in a criminal trial has long been established, but the High Court judgement effectively extended this to cover professional misconduct, closing the door to any proceedings by which an aggrieved party could make a complaint. The only exception would be cases where a trial judge found the standard of expert testimony to be so low as to take the initiative and refer the expert’s conduct to the relevant disciplinary body.

The Court of Appeal has now reversed this decision, recognising that there should be a crucial distinction between civil proceedings against expert witnesses and disciplinary procedures. The relevant disciplinary body, such as the RIBA or the ARB in the case of architects, is therefore free once again to investigate and, where necessary, take action against an expert witness where the quality of evidence given has raised concerns.

Architecture remains a profession where practitioners strive to ‘make a difference’ using the vehicle of innovative design. In November the RIBA will present a one-day symposium examining design practice as research, featuring a host of speakers active in areas such as social change, housing, health, the environment and technology.

The event has been convened by Katherine Heron, head of architecture at the University of Westminster, who has given the event an international aspect by including Professor Leon van Schaik of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Richard Blyth of the University of Tasmania among the contributors.

During the symposium RIBA vice president for education Simon Allford will present the first annual RIBA President’s Research Awards for outstanding PhD research and for outstanding academic based research. A call for next year’s awards will also be announced.

Further details of ‘Making the difference: design practice as research,’ which takes place at the RIBA on 24 November 2006, is at

http://www.architecture.com/go/Events/Events_2623.html

An opportunity to tell the government exactly what you think about Building Regulations ahead of the government’s promised overhaul of the system is currently being offered on the DCLG website. Taking the form of an online forum, the consultation exercise is part of a scoping study that has been commissioned to give the DCLG an independent view of what type of reforms are needed.

The Practice Department is encouraging architects to make their views known on the forum at http://forum.communities.gov.uk/achievingbuildingstandards which will be open until 13 December 2006.

The RIBA submitted its own detailed proposals for Building Regulations reform at the end of August (see Practice Bulletin 363), headed by a call to co-ordinate all building performance criteria into a revised and improved Building Regulations system. Key concerns of the RIBA are the increasing weight of piecemeal revisions and the recent trend towards overlapping of controls, particularly when exercised through planning.

The RIBA Practice Policy Paper, Improving the Building Regulations, is available at http://www.riba.org/fileLibrary/pdf/improving_building_regulations.pdf

Far from being the driving force behind new offsite construction solutions, architects are criticised as being too wedded to traditional construction techniques in what is claimed to be the first industry-wide survey of offsite construction prospects. And the people pointing the finger are contractors.

The survey, published this week in Contract Journal, was carried out by offsite consultant Mtech, and focused on contractor attitudes towards offsite methods and the emerging trends. One of the key findings was that contractors now see themselves as the main decision makers over whether to go offsite, in contrast to the conventional view that leading-edge clients and their design consultants are driving the process forward.

The companies surveyed suggested that only 16% of decisions to use offsite technologies are being directly influenced by the client. Instead, more than half said that decisions are being dictated by the nature of the project, while almost one third of companies said that the decision would be influenced by corporate strategy.

A majority of the companies also reported that a senior executive at board level has responsibility for offsite constructions, while 39% said that they had a specialist director or manager responsible for offsite technology and innovation.

One of the unexpected trends emerging from the survey was the number of companies that suggested that architects should be taking more of a lead and not leaving contractors to discuss offsite alternatives with a client and then translate existing designs to accommodate an offsite solution.

Speed of construction and safety issues, were by far the most frequent considerations when choosing to go offsite, according to respondents, with architects coming in for criticism again over the contractors’ need for speed. The criticisms focused on architects’ failure to appreciate the value of an early ‘design freeze’, without which the advantages of offsite construction are compromised.

The professional indemnity insurance market is reported to be as ‘soft’ (cheap) now as it has been for several years, with premiums in steady decline since 2003. Giving a RIBA business masterclasses on risk management, PI consultant Roger Flaxman said that the industry consensus is that 2007 PII rates are likely to fall again next year by up to 15%.

A traditional indicator of PII premium directions is the solicitors’ market, which tends to set the pace for other sectors; the market expectation here is for general reductions of up to 20% across the profession.

For the time being the PII market is flush with money looking to underwrite insurance risk, so competition is fierce and premiums are falling. The big question is when will the PII market turn – when insurance markets do turn the corrections can often be rapid.

Flaxman reports that the majority of PII underwriters already believe that the time has come to increase prices, which are low when set against rising levels of claims. However no-one wants to be the first to make the move.

There is also increasing evidence that PII service is suffering as premiums continue to be slashed to acquire market share, leaving architects’ claims resisted by insurers and in some case rejected altogether.

As a risk management and PII consultant, Flaxman argues that the best strategy for practices is to seek specialist advice to find the best combination of broker and insurer to meet a practice’s needs. There are currently 38 insurers specialising in PII in the UK and some 25 firms of specialist brokers. It is quite possible, argues Flaxman, for a practice to take advantage of a soft market to manage future costs when premiums will inevitably rise.

An independent PII consultant can also provide an assessment of the ‘risk gap’ faced by a practice, particularly when it is considering changing insurers, and how this can be reduced by the best choice of insurance deal. As Flaxman points out, the secret of effective PII cover is not found in the description of what a policy covers, but in exclusions and restrictions that might not be explicit.

Flaxman Partners’ latest professional indemnity insurance market report is at http://www.flaxmanpartners.co.uk/main/services.php?dbcontent=Indemnity_Insurance