From CABE to the Office for Place: why trusted advice matters

After every election, it’s the same mantra: the old government failed, and the new government will sort it out. And so here we are again – same problems, different solutions. For our industry, the question is how to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years and ensure they’re of good quality. The danger for any new government, especially one with a huge and powerful majority, is believing it has all the answers.

I spend a lot of my time talking about how to make good places – there’s a lot of opportunity. In the last month, I have spoken at conferences in Turin and Manchester, attended meetings held by RIBA, RICS, the NLA, and more than one government department. All have been interesting, attended by clever, experienced people, and relentlessly upbeat and full of great ideas. But it’s only when I get back to my desk, in my office surrounded by colleagues, in rooms with our architects and professional teams, that I contribute to activities that will actually get anything built.

So why do it? Because, even though I’m old and have done this for more years than I care to think about, it’s arrogant in the extreme to imagine I’ve done anything other than scratch the surface of what there is to learn about what we do. And I’m restlessly curious. It’s also important to keep one foot in the real world – when you’re head-down in the day-to-day hard work of development, sometimes it’s hard to lift your head, look around, and check that what you’re doing is as good as it can possibly be.

Government’s role in shaping the quality of what we do takes many forms. Regulation is essential. At the moment, we are all feeling the pressure from the forest of regulatory updates, which are creating delays for almost all large planning applications as buildings are returned to the drawing board for amendments. It’s a full-time job to keep up, but it’s hard to argue against it when we are all fully committed to making our buildings as safe as they can possibly be for their users.

Then there’s the planning system and the laws that enable it. In terms of how places – and the buildings and landscapes that shape them – are designed and curated, after safety regulation, it’s the most powerful tool government has to improve economies, communities, and people’s lives. That’s why, in recent years, revising the NPPF has been one of the first things new administrations have leapt on as a way of improving how development works.

From the Royal Fine Art Commission, through CABE and the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, such bodies have come and gone

As developers, we have our views on how planning policy should be shaped to deliver the most successful places, and, as with all industries, we have an opportunity to advise, lobby, and advocate for our expertise. But ultimately, it’s our job to work within the system set down by national, regional, and local government. As long as it allows us to do what we know how to do profitably and well, all we really ask of planning authorities is for two things: clarity in policy and consistency in its application.

Everything else is just advice. Even constructive public consultation exercises, whilst required by the planning process, are just advice from those in the community to those who want to build there. If we are sensible in our business, we will be very hungry indeed for all the advice we can get, especially from those who know more than we do. The benefit of good public consultation is that those who want to build seldom know more about the local community than those who live in and serve it. It’s a foolish developer who doesn’t understand this and act accordingly.

>> Also read: Why Labour may come to regret closing the Office for Place

And so to the demise of the Office for Place – the latest in a long line of bodies established to research, promote, and advise those engaged in development on what good places are. From the Royal Fine Art Commission, through CABE and the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, such bodies have come and gone. Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook and his boss Angela Rayner have decided that this work can be better done from inside the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government. They have announced a list of measures that they say demonstrates their commitment to making places better: the New Towns Taskforce, reforms to the NPPF, updates to the National Design Guide and National Model Design Code, increased funding to local planning departments, continued support for the excellent Public Practice, and the establishment of quarterly steering boards on design and placemaking to advise them and their colleagues.

I don’t have a view on the Office for Place. It didn’t have a chance to prove itself.

And so… more initiatives, more experts around tables talking about things, more reports, more output, more guidance, more advice – all of which will only work if anyone pays the blindest bit of attention to it.

What works in my business is when that advice is trusted. And that trust is only earned. By the time it was all but closed down in 2010 in the Bonfire of the Quangos, CABE had established itself as a serious organisation delivering high-quality advice to both planning authorities and the development community seeking permission to build. Its funding allowed it to develop high-quality enabling services to planning teams, a design review function respected by planning authorities, developers, and the communities they serve, and an engine of policy research that produced endless advice and guidance on key issues. The important thing is that it had time to prove itself – to earn the trust of those it was established to help – until politics got in the way.

I don’t have a view on the Office for Place. It didn’t have a chance to prove itself. I’m sure that MHCLG is staffed by extremely clever people (not least Joanna Averley and Sarah Allan, Chief Planner and Head of Architecture respectively) who are highly committed to the issues they are charged with wrangling. But if previous governments are anything to go by, as quickly as the Housing Minister changes, so will policy, and so will the shape of the advice issued. What I am sure about is that the benefit of an arms-length body – properly funded, charged with developing and sharing real expertise, and somewhat independent of the ebb and flow of politics – is too important to lose.

>> Also read: Decision to scrap government design advisor Office for Place a ‘mistake’, says Nicholas Boys Smith

>> Also read: True placemaking is so much more than just a numbers game – King’s Cross is a prime example