“Beauty” isn’t working
I’ve been holed up in London for 15 years. But home is where the heart is. And my heart belongs to Sheffield. Home of the Arctic Monkeys, Pulp and Joe Cocker. Like Rome and San Francisco - a city which sits gloriously astride 7 hills. The snooker. The Full Monty. More trees per head than any city in Europe. Even wandering down the high street, you’re rarely more than 20 minutes on a bus from the heart of the Peak District National Park. A world class university to boot. Ah - there’s much to love about Sheffield.
Which is why it’s so sad to mark another week when Sheffield has been done over by the planning system. Here are just 3 of the big headlines for you:
1990 - out-of-town shopping centre “Meadowhall” knocks a chunk out of the city centre which takes generations to heal. That healing continues. Sheffield’s centre has revived into an exciting place with lots of independent retail and some fantastic regeneration schemes on foot. But it has, sadly, not kept pace with the remarkable transformation in places like Leeds, Birmingham or Manchester.
2009 - after 20 years of work, proposals to revamp Sheffield’s city centre were put on a “hold” that has already lasted over a decade.
2021 - in our era of “levelling up” the mighty northern cities, this week the Government confirmed that it’s scrapping the leg of HS2 which was to link Sheffield to Leeds, Birmingham and London. The Sheffield Telegraph’s front page was one to remember:
Ah well. Maybe next time.
In other news, you may remember what I told you a few months back about a successful housing appeal in the Hertfordshire Green Belt on the edge of a village called Colney Heath: for the details, and a link to the decision, have a look here.
Well, you know a decision’s really hit the big leagues when it sparks a whole Parliamentary debate, which it seems to have done this week: see here. Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem MP for St Albans, wanted Chris Pincher to apologise for and to “rectify” (whatever that means) what she calls a “shock” decision. She doesn’t elaborate on exactly what the “shock” was. The shockingly well humoured barrister-cum-blogger promoting the scheme. Who knows.
Anyway, the Minister’s reply is worth reading in full. A full-throated and unsurprising recitation of the Government’s commitment to the Green Belt is followed by an intriguing paragraph:
“The challenge for all authorities, however, is to get an up-to-date plan in place. We might say that, in the land of no plan, the local housing need number is king. If there is no set number in an up-to-date local plan, it is quite possible for developers to submit speculative development applications to local authorities. The local authorities may choose to turn them down, but if they have no number in their plan, the local housing need number is the default that the Planning Inspectorate will look at. It is entirely possible that the Planning Inspectorate will overturn refusals sent down by local authorities that do not have up-to-date plans or targets, and will instead look at the local housing need target. It is incumbent on local authorities that wish to protect their communities and avoid speculative development to get up-to-date plans in place.”
“In the land of no plan, the local housing need number is king” - that’s a line to slip into appellants’ closing submissions up and down the land.
Finally this week: beauty. Back in February, I told you what I think the problems are with beauty as a planning policy criterion: see here. In a nutshell, it’s all very well “asking for beauty”. But if you ask for something as complicated as that without defining it - or even setting out the beginnings of a definition - and then you enshrine it at the heart of your national planning policy, that’s a recipe for two things: confusion and perpetuating subconscious prejudice. Focus on high quality design. Define design expectations. Reward high quality architecture. But, as I said way back then: “I’d leave beauty to the poets, the artists and the philosophers. Planners already have enough on our plates.”
Well, safe to say, nobody in the corridors of power is reading this blog. Thank goodness. The 2021 NPPF puts beauty right at the heart of what sustainable development means, and what the planning process is designed to achieve. Which is all very well. But how’s it been playing out in practice?
Well, here are two recent high profile examples for you - both London tall building cases:
First: a wonderful decision from a Premier League Inspector - Paul Griffiths - granting consent for 144 affordable homes next to West Ealing station: here (full disclosure: I was part of the appellant’s team). The decision’s worth reading for lots of reasons - not least its storming application of the tilted balance (on which more here). Still, on this idea of “beauty", the Inspector said:
“The concept of ‘beauty’ warrants attention too […] There is I believe something of a tension between identifying a building as an exemplary piece of design which is an objective finding based on established architectural principles, and adorning a building with the epithet ‘beautiful’, which is a subjective one. To my mind, my finding that the building would attain a very high (or exemplary) standard of design is sufficient to justify a conclusion that the proposal does not fall foul of Government advice on the subject in the Framework, the National Design Guide, and the National Model Design Code.”
Second: the fascinating report I mentioned in my last post from another very experienced Inspector - David Nicholson - recommending refusal of the Tulip scheme in the City of London - link here. A must-read decision - in particular on heritage and design. I talked about it with Simon Ricketts last week on Clubhouse - anyone interested can listen here. But on this “beauty” issue, the Inspector said:
“I did not pursue the notion of beautiful found in the draft NPPF. It is evident, for all the reasons that they set out, that the Appellant and its supporters consider that the scheme would be beautiful while objectors think it would not. While I certainly accept that innovative designs can be beautiful, in other regards I consider that the concept of beauty or otherwise for this appeal is in the eye of the beholder and that any further discussion is unlikely to be helpful.”
There we have it. For the all the fanfare which accompanied its insertion into national policy, in two high profile cases concept of “beauty” is making precisely zilcho difference. Which, you may’ve thought, is a decent argument for not having included it as a policy criterion in the first place.
In the meantime, stay well #planoraks. We’ve all felt it: the media buzz is building over this year’s Christmas Planorak Awards! IT COULD BE YOU (particularly if you’re a broadsheet columnist who likes having ill-informed pops at the planning system). For a refresher on last year’s winners: here you go. Stay well. Enjoy what apparently could be snow on the way this weekend 🥶. And through it all: #keeponplanning.
