The ‘planning board’ referred to in your news item of August 12, is the ‘Advisory Board’ appointed by the government to drive up building – especially housing – design standards as part of revised planning arrangements.
The Advisory Board consists primarily of heavyweight industrial leaders with a variety of relevant experience. For instance, its chairman, Nicholas Boys Smith, founded the organisation Create Streets, which advocates design conscious approach to street design. Amongst other things, he is also a member of the Historic England Commission and an academic.
The deputy chair is Vidhya Alakeson, who was the founding chief executive of Power to Change, a trust supporting the growth of community businesses, with the aim of benefitting local communities. Other recruits to the Advisory Board all bring substantial relevant experience to the task.
A major objective will be to support the establishment and training of the local bodies, who will produce and apply the new design rules for their own local areas.
Twenty communities are taking part in the pilot scheme. With the drive provided by the strongly led experts of the Advisory Board, it should be possible to achieve a significant improvement over the poor experience of recent years, so long as the government doesn’t get cold feet over it.
One expressed concern, is that speeded up planning may get houses quicker, but that areas of natural beauty may be allowed to suffer as a consequence.
The Advisory Board will oversee the establishment and functioning of a new group called the Office for Place, whose future task appears to be to assist local authorities to establish the new processes in their own areas and to approve each local area’s design code.
John Hayes represents parliament on the Advisory Board, and stated in your news item that he will be responsible for the Office for Place unit, which will be advised by the board.
He has steadily backed governments over many years in running down the local environment to its present regrettable state, so it will be interesting to see if he can readjust.
John Tippler
Spalding
