Design codes face an uncertain future, one caused by the recent disbanding of the Office for Place and the new NPPF removing the mandatory requirement for design codes to be produced. This leaves questions about what role design codes have in the planning process and who should be creating them. Should local planning authorities take the lead, or should large developers be left to create their own design codes for unifying sites?

In this context, industry experts, planners, architects and policymakers participated in a breakfast roundtable hosted by The Earls Court Development Company (ECDC) and chaired by Esther Kurland of Urban Design Learning.

ECDC, responsible for central London’s largest clear development opportunity, assembled a range of experts to discuss this. After four years of working with a world-class design team, and consulting extensively with the local community and planning authorities, ECDC published the Earls Court Design Code in July 2024. It sets out both site-wide design aspirations and principles around the masterplan’s seven character areas. Structured around the design of built form and landscape, it aligns with the characteristics set out in the National Model Design Code (NDMC).

Upon completion, a team of experts in their field peer-reviewed the code, including Vicky Payne, co-author of the National Model Design Code, and Matthew Carmona, Professor of Planning and Urban Design at The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. Together they stated that the Earls Court’s Design Code “can become a benchmark for major brownfield developments in future”.

The roundtable opened with an overview of the document by Marko Neskovic from Hawkins Brown. This was followed by a presentation by Dinah Bornat on ECDC’s Public Realm Inclusivity Panel (PRIP), which demonstrated how local people from a range of ages, backgrounds and disabilities informed the Design Code directly through their discussions, setting a blueprint for other schemes to follow. The final presentation came from Vicky Payne, discussing the peer review panel’s assessment of the code, including praise for its clarity, flexibility, and longevity.  

Wider contributions included questions on how the PRIP worked in practice and also how the code would be enforced during the evolution of the development programme. This interesting point created a discussion around the balance between “musts” and “shoulds”. Finding this balance between guidance and flexibility in design codes was deemed important given the timescales for the construction of large schemes like Earls Court.

Andy von Bradsky, the other co-author of the NMDC, pointed out that the NMDC guides councils to add their own design policies to their local plans rather than a separate design code. There was also strong support for ECDC’s focus on the public realm, especially given that the open spaces are the greatest opportunity for people to experience the place. 

Valuable contributions were also made to the discussion by members from organisations such as Historic England, Create Streets, both the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and the GLA. 

However, this roundtable is not the end of the discussion. With the government still to set out exactly how design codes will work in future, there remains a lot to be determined about their future, and the industry will be watching this issue closely. However, as we learned at the roundtable, Earls Court has developed an excellent blueprint which others can learn from.