CABE and the Housing Corporation have announced a new toolkit developed to help housing clients and their design teams demonstrate to planners and funding agencies how their development proposals will meet Building for Life standards.

Building for Life standards have now been adopted by both the Corporation and English Partnerships and increasing numbers of local authorities are now demanding that house builders must fulfil a majority of the 20 Building for Life criteria.

CABE, which developed the toolkit for the Corporation, says the aim is to get all sides using the same design language to assess proposals. The guidance provides examples of design-related material - diagrams, plans, visuals and models - clients can include in grant application tenders or design and access statements.

The Corporation, for its part, says it also regards the toolkit as an assessment tool that will help funding bodies and planners judge whether proposals are up to scratch.

The new toolkit, entitled ‘Evaluating housing principles step by step,’ is available to download for free from http://www.buildingforlife.org/

Billed as the first complete guide to the process of creating successful sustainable places, the new Urban Design Compendium 2 is officially approved by the UK’s two most powerful regeneration agencies - soon to become one - the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships.

Launched last week, with its own supporting interactive web version, the new urban design bible is presented as the successor to the seven year-old Urban Design Compendium, but with an emphasis on project deliver. Accordingly the steps to success are concerned more with design management than detailed design solutions; the five key steps are entitled commitment and leadership, integrated approach, adding value, working collaboratively, and legacy and management.

UDC2 also identifies the main barriers to good urban design, presenting a range of exemplar schemes as examples of how to overcome them.

The new guide can also be read as a supporting document to the Corporation’s new Design and Quality standards which will apply to all schemes in its forthcoming 2008-11 investment programme.

‘The first Urban Design Compendium transformed our understanding of what constitutes good urban design,’ said Trevor Beattie, English Partnerships’ Director of Corporate Strategy. ‘Seven years and 25,000 copies later we need the same transformation in our approach to delivery. Urban Design Compendium 2 is the first complete guide to the process of creating successful sustainable places. It is a practical manual for project delivery and its impact will be measured in the quality of places it inspires.

More information

Source: RIBA Practice Bulletin No. 415 (27 September 2007)

Designing out risk in public spaces is in danger of going too far, argues the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, with a rash of bland and standardised spaces being the inevitable result. The agency that has done so much to restore the importance of quality space alongside quality buildings, now wants designers and their clients to start challenging the risk-averse culture that is becoming entrenched.

In its latest report, Living with risk: promoting better public space, CABE suggests that compensation culture fears may have been overstated; while fear of litigation clearly lies behind the risk-free design response, the reality is that the level of personal injury claims in the UK has been falling. And CABE has attracted some unexpected allies to its new campaign, including the Health and Safety Executive and Zurich Municipal, the largest insurer of local authorities.

Basing its conclusions on case studies and a survey of key organisations, the report suggests there is significant agreement among the key organisations involved that the situation needs to change and that too much professional effort is being devoted to designing out risk, to over-design and to ad hoc design interventions.

The way forward, of course, is for a sensible and proportionate approach to design based on normal behaviour, rather than freak accidents. The report offers a number of principles that can be applied, including the early involvement of all of the main user groups in any risk assessment process.

CABE is preparing a briefing on humanising streets that will look at the balance that can be achieved in shared and civic spaces.

The CABE report even dares to suggest that risk can be celebrated, as long as there is a clear design vision to manage it and any opportunities for positive risk taking are clearly communicated – hope CABE has got its relevant cover in place.

Living with risk: promoting better public space is available as a briefing or in full if you follow this link.

[RIBA PRACTICE BULLETIN - No. 400   - Ref: 32]

A ‘living draft’ of new planning guidance on managing flood risk has been published as a support document to PPS 25 (Development and Flood Risk), which was released in December. The new document is presented as both interim guidance and a consultation on the final guidance note.

The Communities Department says it is planning a series of regional workshops in partnership with the RTPI to help planners understand how PPS25 should work in practice. It seems that the government’s decision to produce PPS statements in a much slimmer format then the old PPGs is creating a need for additional explanation. The Practice Guide, which is mainly concerned with flood risk assessment, is here.

The Welsh Assembly has dramatically upped the sustainability stakes by setting a zero carbon target for all new buildings by 2011 – five years ahead of the UK government’s recently-announced target for zero carbon homes.

Despite reports of scepticism from some quarters, failure would prove a major embarrassment for the assembly, which has made high performance buildings the headlining policy of its emerging climate change strategy.

First of all, the assembly needs to take responsibility for its own Building Regulations, currently set by Whitehall. Environment minister Carwyn Jones says the assembly is in the process of opening discussions with the UK government over devolution of the regulatory framework.

‘Once these regulations are devolved, it will allow us to move further and faster on achieving zero carbon on all new buildings in Wales,’ Jones said.

Architects working in Wales will see the effect of the new policy stance immediately, however. As a first step, the assembly has decided that all new buildings funded by the devolved government must be built to the BREEAM ‘Excellent’ standard, the highest benchmark currently available. This is set to become a core condition of all new projects within six months.

The assembly’s zero carbon ambition is all the more challenging because it applies to all new buildings, not just new homes. The UK government has so far committed to a series of Part L revisions for housing – starting with a 25% improvement in 2010 – but has not given any parallel commitments to offices and workplaces.

[RIBA Practice Bulletin No. 386]

An unexpected alliance between house builders and the Prince Charles-sponsored Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment was announced this week that sees most of the industry’s big names queuing up to have their developments officially ‘recognised’ by the foundation as meeting its traditional design principles.

The Home Builders Federation said it had entered into a joint commitment with the foundation to promote design principles pioneered at the Prince’s Poundbury development and would be working to promote these principles among mainstream house builders.

Most of the biggest names in housing – Barratt, Bovis, Bellway, Redrow, Persimmon, Bryant, Berkeley and others – featured on the first recognised list of 11 schemes this week, with locations as varied as London’s Swiss Cottage and a retirement scheme in Cupar in Fife.

Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the foundation, explained that the recognition of these schemes amounted to the setting of a benchmark for the best of UK housing design. A statement from the Foundation added that this benchmark would form the basis of an industry-wide programme of design education to be delivered through the Home Builders Federation – you have been warned.

[RIBA Practice Bulletin No. 383]

Is the tide finally beginning to turn in favour of design quality considerations in public sector procurement? Recent events suggest that design is moving up the agenda: new Treasury guidelines for clients are on the way that will put a far stronger emphasis on design appraisal, and this week the influential Commons Public Accounts Committee threw its weight behind a greater weighting for design in PFI projects – very much in line with the RIBA’s Smart PFI model.

The Public Accounts Committee’s report was concerned with the debacle of the Paddington Health Campus and concluded that the inadequate business case for the PFI project should never have been approved until sufficient design work had been completed.

RIBA President Jack Pringle addressed the committee last year, explaining how Smart PFI could have avoided many of the problems that dogged the project. Speaking this week, he said he was delighted with the committee’s support for the RIBA position and for the positive response that the proposals have now received from Treasury and the Office of Government Commerce.

Meanwhile RIBA Vice President for Practice Richard Saxon reports that a new supplement to the Treasury’s Green Book, effectively the rulebook for public sector procurement, will be published in the spring that will require projects to justify themselves in terms of operating costs – minimum ten years – as well as headline capital costs. Environmental impact, in terms of carbon emissions and water use, will also have to be taken into consideration.

Inevitably these demands can only be met through appraisals of more advanced design submissions.

Saxon, who sat on the working group that looked at the whole life cost approach to project value for the Public Sector Construction Clients Forum, says the supplement will reinforce the design aspects of the Gateway Review stages that must be completed during procurement.

The new Gateway Review scenario readily falls into line with Smart PFI in terms of ensuring that the client has an affordable and acceptable design concept before going to the market for a contractor.

[RIBA Practice Bulletin No. 383]

It’s official - the Housing Corporation and regeneration agency English Partnerships are engaged and will tie the knot as soon as possible. Announcing the news yesterday, Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly said that the new super-agency can expect to have a budget of over £4 billion to spend.The merger of the two heavyweight agencies was widely anticipated, following the government’s announcement of a Housing and Regeneration Review last April. In the event, Communities England, as the new agency will be known, is also set to take over some of the functions currently carried out by Kelly’s DCLG, including the decent homes strategy, housing market renewal and housing PFI.

‘With the expectation of over £4 billion of public spending at its disposal, Communities England will pioneer innovative and more efficient ways of working with our key partners in the public, private and voluntary sector to get better outcomes from public investment in places,’ said Kelly.

‘Central to meeting its challenge the agency will not only ensure greater value for money but also guarantee the very highest standards of quality, design, energy efficiency and sustainability.’

Both agencies were stressing that it will be business as usual over the coming months, with continuity of existing programmes, at least for the time being. However it is clear that the government wants to effect the merger and have a fully operational organisation up and running as soon as possible. Baroness Ford, chairman of English Partnerships, has been appointed to head up the transition team that will undertake the planning for the new organisation.

[RIBA Practice Bulletin No. 381]

Within a year the only method of submitting a planning application in England will be completion of a new standard planning application form. The Department of Communities confirmed the timetable for the roll-out of the National Standard Planning Application Form (1APP) this week, with a phased introduction and trials starting in February ahead of a compulsory system from October.In this latest bid to speed up the planning system, the standard forms will give everyone certainty about the type and amount of information they need to submit and will facilitate the switch to a predominantly online service. Local planning authorities will have the option of hosting online forms on their web sites; otherwise they will be available from the government’s Planning Portal at http://www.planningportal.gov.uk

Paper forms will not disappear, however, as planning authorities will still be expected to make hard copies available.

The Planning Portal is planning a series of regional workshops around the country to introduce the new standard form. The same form will cover a range of application types, including Householder, Planning Permission, Listed Building Consent, Conservation Area consent and tree applications/orders (but not building control or minerals). Further details of the roll-out programme will be posted at the Planning Portal.

[RIBA Practice Bulletin - No. 376]

House builders chose to foreshadow the government’s new housing planning policy launch this week with the results of a survey on planning approval times that found that the average housing application now takes 248 days, roughly three times the government’s target of 91 days.In what is claimed to be the first survey of its kind, the HBF looked at a sample of 580 sites being developed by 24 companies, with proposals ranging from one to 1500 new homes.

The alarming results included the finding that there is an average delay of 17 days between the submission and registration of an application (the target is 24 hours!), and an average delay of 98 days between a committee resolution to grant permission and the issuing of a decision notice. All in all, the HBF says that it currently takes over a year and three months (475 days on average) from the submission of an application to a start on site.

Stewart Basely, HBF executive chairman, said: ‘At a time when Britain faces the most acute housing shortage since the industrial revolution, we are seeing significant and systemic delays in the planning process… there are some key areas of the planning process that need to be targeted to make it more efficient and effective.’

[RIBA Practice Bulletin - No. 376]

The government’s planning policy on housing was reshaped yesterday with the publication of the final version of Planning Policy Statement 3 (PPS3), the long awaited successor to PPG3. The document has had several draft incarnations, as ministers struggled to find an acceptable balance between market forces and local authority prescription. The RIBA’s first sight reaction to the definitive statement was very positive, with a number of new policies to be welcomed.PPS3 puts more pressure on authorities to identify appropriate sites for new housing, introducing a requirement to plan 15 years ahead in order to provide for a rolling 5-year supply of ’sustainable and deliverable’ sites.

At the same time, councils are given more flexibility to determine how and where new homes should be built. Local planners will be able to set their own density and car parking standards and will be able to set separate targets for different types of brownfield land in their area.

Local policy options on affordable housing are strengthened and there will be extended powers to require developer contributions to affordable housing on smaller sites where they are judged viable. Rural authorities are separately instructed to take greater account of local affordability issues and make provision for additional housing.

The emphasis on design quality that was introduced in PPG3 is also strengthened, with a more forceful direction to local authorities to turn down poor quality applications.

Where the new PPS3 has a brand new thrust is its emphasis on the provision of family homes and amenities for children. For the first time planners will be required to consider children’s housing needs by providing for gardens, play areas and green spaces.

The government is concerned that the trend towards high-density flats for first time buyers and singletons needs to be moderated. Housing minister Yvette Cooper pointed out yesterday that four out of five new homes in London are currently one- and two-bedroom flats. ‘We need to insist on more family homes,’ she declared.

Part of the solution here will be more freedom for local authorities to promote mixed communities and to ensure that larger houses are developed alongside flats and smaller homes.

Proposals to allow planners to dictate the detailed mix of housing types in an earlier draft PPS3 were fiercely opposed by house builders. Reactions to the new PPS3 on how these provisions will be interpreted in practice will no doubt emerge over the coming weeks.

The emphasis on the reuse of brownfield land is retained. The shift here is to require local authorities to take stronger action to bring brownfield sites back into use. Supporting this policy will be a new National Brownfield Strategy to be developed by regeneration agency English Partnerships. The Department of Communities published a discussion paper on the proposed strategy this week alongside PPS3 - English Partnerships is due to submit detailed policy recommendations to the government early next year.

Planning Policy Statement 3: Housing is available to download now at: www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1504591

English Partnerships’ National Brownfield Strategy discussion paper will be posted shortly on its web site at: http://www.englishpartnerships.co.uk

[RIBA Practice Bulletin - No. 376]

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.

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.