Purpose of the Commission

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Purpose of the Commission

• Produce mechanisms for the Corporation to improve
  quality and consistency
• Develop understanding of current procurement
  mechanisms and delivery chain

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Purpose of the Commission

• Send a message
• One of the main organisations at work in the
  Gateway is committed to a serious long-term
  programme of significant high quality investment
  there

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Purpose of the Commission

• A call to action

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High expectations

• We must hold high expectations. That Leamington,
  Belgravia or Edinburgh New Town could 200 years
  ago, self-consciously and planned, build
  environments which remain so attractive to
  communities even today, when they had less than a
  tenth of our wealth, less than a tenth of our
  social legislation and less than a tenth of our
  engineering technology, shows what is well within
  our reach, if we have the consistent will and
  patience. People are the only difference in the
  equation, to make it worse or to make it better.
  We must choose to make it better in the Gateway.

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Thames Gateway Policy Framework

• Thames Gateway Interim Plan

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Thames Gateway Policy Framework

• New Things Happen

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Fundamental role of the Housing Corporation

• 160,000 new homes in the Gateway by 2016
• Housing Corporation funding will lead to 60,000
  social/affordable homes

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• Good design should contribute positively to
  making places better for people. Design which is
  inappropriate in its context, or which fails to
  take the opportunities available for improving
  the character and quality of an area and the way
  it functions, should not be accepted

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National Policy Framework

• PPS 1
• PPS 3
• Code for Sustainable Homes
• Manual for Streets
• CABE

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Housing corporation

• First among equals in a complex delivery chain
• Complex not cop out

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National debate on housing

• Green Paper
• Callcutt
• Anxieties about quality and quantity
• Limited choice of homes
• Shortage of land and cost of obtaining planning
  permission

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National debate on housing

• CABE audit of Thames Gateway housing in 2004
  thirteen schemes
• Five poor
• Six average
• Two good
• 82 average or worse

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Regional Findings

• Findings of East of England Housing Audit
• Overwhelming majority (61) assessed as
  Average 17 were Good or Very Good 22
  were judged to be Poor quality.
• Positives a number of urban design principles
  becoming the norm (particularly in London),
  including relationships between public and
  private space, appropriate use of scale.
• Negatives Poor schemes dominated by highways
  infrastructure (over-scaled roundabouts, separate
  surfacing for pedestrians and vehicles), and
  limited evidence of site-specific design and
  construction.
• Schemes built after introduction of Planning
  Policy Guidance Note 3 (which sets out design
  principles for residential developments) show
  improvements overall, but problems remain with
  highway infrastructure and design.

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Regional Findings

• East of England Housing Audit, October 2004
• The Audit for the East of England looked at the
  design standards of 100 schemes completed by
  volume house builders between 2001 and 2003.
• Building for Life Standard (BfL), a joint
  initiative of CABE, the House Builders Federation
  and the Civic Trust, assesses schemes under 4
  main criteria character roads, parking and
  pedestrianisation design and construction
  environment and community.

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Regional Findings

• Comments on National Picture, Housing Audit
  February 2007
• Only 18 per cent fewer than one in five of
  developments audited could be classed as good
  or very good.
• The quality of a substantial minority of
  developments 29 per cent is so low that they
  simply should not have been given planning
  consent.
• The four southern regions of England outperform
  the national picture, with 24 per cent of
  developments classed as good or very good

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Regional Findings

• General Recommendations
• Local planning authorities adopt BfL criteria to
  raise quality of proposals and enforce standards
  ensure access to urban design skills.
• Developers strengthen capacity to delivery good
  design use BfL criteria to raise standards
  review design to achieve zero carbon standards.
• Central Government introduce robust mechanism to
  measure design quality housing and planning
  delivery grant should be tied to design quality
  outcomes investigate shared design advisory
  services.
• Public bodies set out design standards in LDF
  and Regional Spatial Strategy apply and enforce
  rigourous design policies build skills and
  capacity at regional level RSLs should take
  opportunity to be exemplars of good house
  building.
• CABE work with team establishing Communities
  England to ensure capacity and commitment to high
  quality design publish guidance for using BfL at
  pre-planning stage.

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National debate on housing

• Warning from the past
• The London parts of the Thames Gateway are
  littered with examples of large, isolated and
  difficult housing estates with poor links to
  jobs, poor environments, poor services and poor
  transport... built to meet the last housing
  crisis when numbers were the key determination of
  quality.
• (A Framework for Housing in the Thames
  Gateway, LSE Housing and Enterprise LSE Cities
  for London Thames Gateway Partnership, 2004)

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The need for quality

• Avoiding the Thames Gateway double whammy
• Low-density houses at low rates of build-out
• Surfeit of hyper-dense flats

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The need for quality

• If housing is built in those areas without good
  accessibility to jobs, shopping, leisure, health,
  education and other facilities, it will suffer
  the same fate of other large-scale peripheral
  estates

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The need for quality

• Hills
• worst outcomes for deprivation, health, security,
  worklessness, poverty and education associated
  not just with concentrated social housing but
  where flatted developments predominate

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The need for infrastructure
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Respecting the environment

• Designing in a flood plain
• Humanity has rather successfully managed to
  flourish in flood plains over millennia and its
  difficult to see why this success needs to come
  to an abrupt end in our lifetime in the east
  Thames corridor.
• Carbon neutral development

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Role of local authorities

• Place-making
• Establishing a local framework quality and
  setting the bar high
• Emerging Design Pact Thames Gateway Strategic
  Partnership
• Plinc?

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Role of Urban Development Corporations

• Commitment to quality residential development and
  place making
• Design review panels involved too late quality
  panels engage with developers from the start

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The section 106 challenge
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Publicly-owned land
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Need for long-term engagement

• Housing associations traditionally have a
  long-term engagement with the housing they
  create, resulting in an inherent interest in its
  long-term viability, more of a commitment to and
  connection with place

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The service charge problem
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Ends and Means responding to Hills

• Social housing should help create mixed
  communities
• Avoid building in the most deprived areas without
  reducing concentrations of social housing and
  deprivation
• Adopt and promote choice-based lettings
• Social housing as a tenure of choice
• Reduce negative neighbourhood effects and
  improve labour market integration

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The current approach to quality

• Housing Corporation
• Formula, quantification, tick-boxing
• Scheme standards
• Waivers
• New approach

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• The Corporation is currently revising its Scheme
  Development Standards to focus on internal and
  external environment and on sustainability

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Recommended approach

• Prospectus quality first
• Round table
• How was it for you?

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Other recommendations

• Get behind the Thames Gateway Interim Plan
• Tighten up use of waivers

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Recommendations RSLs

• Embrace quality first/prospectus approach
• Support emerging Design Pact
• Get behind the Thames Gateway Interim Plan
• Best practice relationships with local
  authorities, GLA, house builders
• Promote mixed tenure developments
• Commitment to carbon-neutral development

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Recommendations CLG

• Set out criteria for planning authorities to
  judge and prioritise design
• Require Planning Inspectorate to produce annual
  report on design and quality
• Encourage partnering between local authorities
  and quality developers
• Obtain support in CSR07 for investment to bring
  sites in Interim Plan to market
• Adopt model of English Cities East pact
• Review service charges and maintenance funding

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Recommendations local authorities

• Embrace and implement the TGSP Design Pact
• Adopt Residential Design Guidance based on
  Building for Life and other existing standards
  and guidance
• Adopt choice based lettings approach by 2010
• Review their role in place making
• Monitor planning decisions against design
  criteria
• Avoid disposing of freeholds for best price

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Recommendations Planning Inspectorate

• Let developers and local authorities know that
  applications can be rejected on the basis of low
  quality

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Recommendations private sector

• Look at longer term models of investment,
  engagement and management
• Engage with housing associations and local
  authorities at an early stage
• Embrace the prospectus approach
• Invest in skills and knowledge to establish and
  adopt best practice

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