Measures to shake up the planning system and extend the concept of permitted development were given a luke-warm reception by NLA’s Sounding Board on Wednesday, with some suggesting they would do nothing for town centres, the quality of housing delivered for communities or the architectural profession as a whole.

The ideas suggested by Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week as part of his ‘build, build, build’ speech on the day before Sounding Board met were a case of ‘devil in the detail’ and were suggested by people who don’t run planning departments or understand all the issues, said Heather Cheesbrough of Croydon. ‘Before we start shaking up the system, I think we should look very clearly at what politicians including elected politicians in national governments are doing to interfere in te system and to subvert it’, she said. Whilst not perfect, the planning system does seek to negotiate and navigate between myriad interest groups, she added.

Create Streets Founding Director Nicholas Boys Smith, who has advised government on planning issues, had earlier outlined some of the ways in which government was seeking to ‘get more certainty in the system without losing the advantages of strategic planning’. The planning process needs more ‘democracy’, said Boys Smith. ‘Every bit of data I’ve looked at and every process I’ve been able to find information on shows that despite very good intentions we have not managed to bring proper community engagement work or empirical data on what people prefer where they want to see plans and how they want to conceive them. Outline planning permission was an attempt to bring greater democracy, and although permitted development has ‘worked at one level’ in leading to more supply, there were ‘very correct criticisms made about the quality of the housing that’s been provided’, he said. Basic standards of housing and quality were not sufficiently embedded either into the building regulations under the current system or into a more rules-based planning system, suggested Boys Smith, leaving planners seeking clarity with ‘nowhere to go’.

Be First’s Pat Hayes said that the ideas surrounding updating the use class orders were a move in the right direction, but Michael Lowndes felt that the move to more permitted development was ‘troubling’, particularly around what that might mean for town centres, and moves to allow more building up could represent a ‘charter for building ugly’. Stuart Baillie of Knight Frank said he too shared an ‘anxiety’ over PD, but that the upwards extension is only limited to buildings up to 30m in height, but that further PDR will be controlled and require a lot of assessment work from local authorities. Next Gen Sounding Board representative Selasi Setufe, moreover, wondered how we could ensure quality design on PD ‘because we’re struggling with that as it is’. Is there an obligation for PD providers to use built environment professionals or do they risk becoming defunct? ‘Where is the space for the architect?’. The planning system should fundamentally be a convener for the community’s vision of what they want, suggested Westminster’s Deirdra Armsby. Perhaps the trick will be in bringing people with us and engaging more, with less of the kind of placemaking the has become ‘place-washing’ too often too, agreed Central’s Pat Brown. And, said LLDC’s Pam Alexander, one of the key problems in PD is its focus on ‘just the building. ‘It doesn’t think about the landscape, the context, the community, sustainability; anything else at all. So building regs alone can never deliver what we consider to be good building’. 

On Tuesday afternoon it was the LFA Symposium on Architecture and Power which acted as a neat bookend for the whole digital event this year. 

The talks and presentations in the event organised with the RA were split into two sections, each exploring the festival theme of power but the first on power of place in both geographical and digital terms and the second on ‘power of people’. 

Presentations ranged from Jana Culek of Studio Fabula’s explorations of power’s relationship with forms of Utopia – the subject of her PhD – with reference to Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow, to Peter Griffiths of ING Media’s presentation of the firm’s analysis on 790 cities across the world according to their digital strengths, with ‘total visibility’ for these cities being a good indicator of a country’s economic performance. While Rome punches significantly above its weight, it is easier for cities to fall than rise and the global ‘superbrands’ remain Tokyo, New York, London and Paris, with the UK capital’s status being critical to the ability for designers to influence what cities look like around the world. While Roland Reemaa ran through an exposition of ‘weak monuments’, the contradictorily named show from the Venice Biennale, Cardiff University’s Dr Tahl Kaminer looked at particularly UK council housing as a key signifier of social standing – its ‘embourgeoisement’.

The second session was perhaps more powerful (if you pardon the pun), including Anisha Jogani’s look at the Croydon Imaginarium - how Croydon Council is learning to improve how it engages with, empowers, and collaborates with the public. ‘We are aiming to make planning popular, through physical and digital space’, she said of the scheme, which aims to democratise access and demystify the planning process. Dr Kat Martindale took the audience through a fascinating presentation on the power of public protest with regard to a ‘battle’ for Bondi Beach; protests against the Olympic volleyball stadium that was proposed then in Sydney but ‘which excluded all community engagement at the outset’. Protest, she said, has a very valid role to play in the design of the built environment. Clare Richards of ft’work, meanwhile, said she still saw her role as an architect today to be what it was in her previous career as a filmmaker ‘giving a voice to communities’, but that some of the social divisions she has witnessed have become more evident as a result of the pandemic. So this year’s power theme presented a good opportunity to undertake some research in which young people so often left without a voice could produce a film to explain what power means to them. Vanessa presented a trailer to the film, shot in Brixton, in which one said the power comes from within the community. ‘Young people need more platforms like this, to have their voices heard, now more than ever’, said Vanessa.