Our response to the White Paper drew on 25 years’ experience or working with local authorities across the south east, providing us with real insight on how well design places are delivered. Our consultation response also reflected extensive engagement with our partners and clients including local authority planning and design officers, the private sector, design panels from London and the wider South East, and the nationwide Design Network.
Though we supported aspects of the White Paper, we made a number of comments relating the challenges of engaging communities in plan making and design coding, the need to locate design codes in a comprehensive design management system and the need to build the new system on the best practice that exists across our region.
Our response is based on 8 recommendations:
- Promote a national step change in the volume and depth of public engagement
- Use this opportunity to unlock the transformative power of design
- Prioritise the development of design management systems in which codes sit
- Build a design led planning system on existing best practice
- Empower local planning authorities to demand well designed places
- Form a new national body from the existing national network of organisations
- Engage local authorities and their stakeholders in the next steps
- Align the financial resources available to authorities with the scale of change
Click here to download our detailed response to MHCLG.
