The case for design codes: some personal reflections
On 17 July 2024 the Office for Place held a webinar to discuss 'The Case for Design Codes'. Nicholas Boys Smith MBE, Chair of the Office for Place, shares some reflections from the discussion.
On Wednesday 17 July, I chaired the Office for Place’s online discussion on The Case for Design Codes with a fascinating panel of firstly local officials taking part in our design code pathfinders programme; secondly of experienced developers who have been working with codes around the country; and, thirdly, of urban designers who have been researching the international use of visual design codes for us at the Office for Place.
The discussion coincided with the publication of a suite of tools, reports and infographics based on our early work with councils, developers, neighbourhoods and consultants up and down the country. (More of that below but if you want to skip ahead, you can access it at Getting Started with Design Codes.)
What did I learn from the three conversations? Here are some of my take-aways. Obviously personal and not comprehensive.
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Think long term and short term. First of all, I was grateful to be reminded of this great quotation from Nye Bevan on the important need to balance short and long term perspectives: “while we shall be judged for a year or two by the number of houses we build….we shall be judged in 10 years’ time by the type of houses we build.” It was true then. It is true now. Quality matters on the path to quantity to win local consents, to permit decent living and to allow us to tread more lightly upon the planet as we create new homes and places.
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Create design codes for the ease of their users not the ease of their writers. Secondly, a theme that came up several times: when writing codes, and local policy more generally, make it easy for applicants to access everything they need to access from one place. Don’t make them look in different chapters, pages or websites. As far as possible, allow them to click through to all locally relevant policy from one page. This will become easier as codes digitise (and do please make it easy to digitise codes! This is the path to de-risked, cheaper and easier to use planning). One interesting international example of this was the block data sheet in Oman, which echoes the ‘plot passport’ in Graven Hill.
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Clarity of code creates planning certainty and confidence for developers. Mary Parsons put it, “codes create a level playing field.” Critical is to get your code into the local plan, or an appropriate supplementary document, so that you are setting the land price and creating planning certainty. This avoids the perverse dilemma, as several developers have put it to me over the years that, “the worst thing that can happen to me during an application is that the development control officer changes half way.”
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Codes can also help councils, by giving an easier to enforce ‘quality ask’, they help stretch unavoidably finite resources further. You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) code for everything.
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Make it easy for the little guys. There is a paradox that the largest authority-wide codes will probably have the most positive benefit for smaller sites. Drafted well, and with sufficiently clear hooks into local policy, authority wide codes will probably be most important at de-risking development for individual plots and smaller sites where high planning risks and costs currently prevent development.
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How to approach larger sites with potentially legacy landowners? For larger sites, particularly when they have developing landowners with a serious approach to stewardship, then a different approach may well be right compared to the rest of the district. That certainly reflects my personal experience with such large developments ‘carved out’ of otherwise authority-wide codes to be led by the developer. To me personally, this seems sensible.
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Keep codes clear and agile. Codes need to be firm and clear, but they also need to evolve and be agile. They need to be ‘living documents.’ We need to find ways not just to create them efficiently but to adapt and update then much more frequently than local plans have typically been updated.
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Keep codes visual. As the excellent research into the international use of codes concluded, ‘illustrations and diagrams make design codes more accessible and usable. Simple diagrams are an important component in most of the case studies as shown for example in the San Jose design codes.’
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Codes are common in much of the world. The Office for Place’s recently published research into international codes reports on 10 of them. We have been the outlier in relying on such verbal, imprecise and arguable definitions of good placemaking.
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Do codes open the option of a twin track approach with a ‘fast track’ for popular and compliant schemes? The Western Australia example with ‘fast-track approval for simple, compliant applications’ suggest that they do. There are mechanism in English planning law that make it possible for us to adapt this approach and I would certainly strongly encourage this. This has the attraction of encouraging development and saving officer time without compromising on quality.
A huge thanks to the expert speakers whose wisdom and experience I have ruthlessly plagiarised above. Thank you to Conor Keappock, the Design and Conservation Lead from Waltham Forest Council and Richard Shaw, the Principal Design Officer at South Kesteven Council for their experience as Office for Place Pathfinder Councils; to Samantha Veal, Director at igloo and Mary Parsons, the Regeneration and Partnerships Director at Lovell Partnerships for their perspectives on how design codes can be used to de-risk development and to Rob Cowan and Marcus Wilshere for their fascinating insights on the widespread use of design codes internationally. You can download their research on International Design Codes.
Thanks also to the kind team from the Office for Place for all their hard work and for making the discussion happen. If you would like more (and who wouldn’t?) then the full video of the conversation will be available from the Office for Place website soon.
You can already download from our website
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An infographic summarising the key benefits of design codes within the planning system;
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Some case studies on how to create and use design codes; and
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An excellent blog from my fellow board member, Esther Kurland on the Urban Design Learning Code School earlier this summer.
And what have we got coming up next at the Office for Place?
You can sign up for our online Places at Pace conference on 18 September which will look at how to use codes to create better places which local populations will recognise and accept.
And running through October and November, we have our Getting Started with Design Codes weekly sessions, covering what to think about and do when starting a design code. Themes include ‘top tips for getting started’, ‘creating an effective evidence base’ and ‘setting your vision.’ See more information on the weekly sessions.
Happy coding and enjoy your summer !
Nicholas Boys Smith, Chair, Office for Place.