Does Michael Gove have a point?

If you read the same type of magazines that I do, you'll know that the Coalition Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has raised the blood pressure of "the architectural community" with some apparently ill considered and uneducated comments about the role (and cost) of Architects within the education sector. At the risk of being lynched by my fellow professionals I have been wondering whether Mr Gove does actually have a valid argument!

Firstly, lets actually consider what he said:

Prior to his ministerial appointment in the new coalition government Mr Gove said Architects were ‘creaming off cash’ under the £55 million BSF programme.

Then, on 2nd June, in the House of Commons and during a debate Mr Gove stated that:

"...I know that Building Schools for the Future makes a distinguished contribution to ensuring that we renovate and refurbish the schools estate, but I have concerns that under my predecessor the programme was not allocating resources to the front line in the most efficient way. It is critical that we ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent on the front line improving education, and not on consultants, architects or bureaucracy...."

Architects Journal

More recently, following a question and answer session at a Free Schools conference on 29th January he said:

“We won’t be getting Richard Rogers to design your school, we won’t be getting any ‘Award winning architects’ to design it, because no-one in this room is here to make architects richer.”

BDonline (Under Creative Commons License: Attribution)

It's interesting to note that the question he was answering was not reported and so his answer could well be out of context, however, on the face of it, the subsequent "outrage" amongst certain quarters appears to be fully justified but is he wrong?

To be clear (before I embark on professional suicide) I am a strong advocate of the argument that Architects can only add value to any project and believe that we, as a profession, have an incredibly important role in lifting the aspiration of students by providing them with buildings that are designed to be fit for purpose and of a higher quality than those that have gone before.

Having said that, I think that Michael Gove is, understandably, upset at how the BSF programme appears to have delivered great value for everyone apart from the Taxpayer. What he fails to understand is that this is not the fault of Architects!!!

It is widely recognised that the BSF procurement process was pretty rubbish (to put it nicely) and that millions were wasted before contracts were even entered into but did we, as a profession, "cream of cash" from the BSF programme?

I don't believe so, however, it is probably accurate to say that the architects involved in BSF were not the most 'cost effective' firms available! In my opinion, the Labour Government was overly obsessed with "starchitecture" as opposed to solid design - the bling over the practical!

I know many architects who have successfully completed a wide variety of education sector projects but who could never get close to a BSF project because they didn't have the 'reputation' in this sector. If the fees charged within the BSF programme were high it is probably simply a reflection of the calibre and profile of the architects appointed!

Taking Mr Gove's statement of June 2010, can we really argue with the sentiment that taxpayers’ money should be spent on the front line improving education, and not on consultants, architects or bureaucracy...."?

Personally, I can't argue with the sentiment of his statement and think that maybe we, as a profession, are being overly sensitive because of his previous statement(s).

The key question for me is how do we ensure that investment in our educational building stock does not compromise investment in the front line? Whilst architects clearly add value, do we always have to use the most expensive firms and build architectural jewels every time or can a more pragmatic and cost effective solution be found?

Finally, Mr Gove had a dig at Richard Rogers and 'award winning architects', predictably, Mr Rogers threw his rattle out of the pram as did a number of other 'leading lights' in our profession - what a surprise!

Is it a crime to suggest that Richard Rogers and his ilk are not the only people that are capable of designing quality schools buildings? I hope not because if it is then I'll be drummed out of the profession before I get chance to pay my 2012 subs!

In my opinion, the obsession with 'starchitects' has caused great damage to us as a profession. Architects are assumed to be raking it in whilst the majority of us struggle to earn a decent living. Mr Gove can, in my opinion, be forgiven for not understanding that you don't have to use Richard Rogers to get good design BUT he shouldn't ignore the valuable contribution that architects make to public building projects.

If the Education Secretary wants to reduce the proportion of school building budgets that get spent on fees then he needs to look at current procurement practices that exclude all bar the largest firms. It's bizarre that, as a practice, we can work on £2million plus design and build schools projects as part of a contractor's design team but can't win a similar sized project in our own right! Relaxing the, frankly draconian, financial and PII minimum requirements will widen the range of practices that can bid for projects and will encourage smaller architectural companies with a track record in education to bring their skills to the table.

If the Education Secretary wants to reduce the overall cost of rebuilding our crumbling schools then he needs to be realistic about how grand he wants new schools building to be. Does every new school have to be an all singing all dancing modern masterpiece or is there scope for them to be more pragmatic exercises in good design?

The Education Secretary must not, however, lose sight of the fact that schools are hugely complex buildings that can't be treated with a "one soloution fits all" approach. Architects are invaluable in assessing and delivering designs that suit the particular needs and requirements of individual clients, regardless of the sector and, if we are to avoid the mistakes of the past, we must be allowed to bring our expertise and knowledge to the table.

So, to conclude:

Did the profession 'cream off cash' in BSF? No but the fees were probably higher than they might have been because the Government wanted 'starchitecture' as opposed to good design.

Is it critical that we ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent on the front line improving education, and not on consultants, architects or bureaucracy? Absoloutely but you can't avoid paying fees for the professionals you need to deliver quality schools buildings for the future!

Does every school need to be designed by Richard Rogers etc? No, in fact having a wider range of architects involved in the schools programme can only benefit both the profession and the taxpayer!

Does Michael Gove have a point? Yes, however his statements before and after show a lack of understanding of the complexity of designing a school and that not all architects are Richard Rogers or charge fees like Richard Rogers but that we CAN deliver quality design when allowed to!

What Michael Gove needs to understand is that Architects are part of the solution (not the problem) but if we continue to get offended by attacks on 'starchitects' and fail to educate our Education Minister about the valuable and irreplacable skills we have as a wider profession we will be stereotyped, sidelined and labelled as an expensive luxury that the country can't afford at this time!

Local involvement in Planning - will it really work?

As some of you may have spotted in the national press, the Coalition Government is pushing forward with a raft of proposals to transfer power away from Whitehall and into the hands of "local people".

One such proposed reform was announced last Monday (6th December) when

"Radical new planning reforms were announced [today] to hand powers down from Whitehall bureaucrats and down from Town Hall officials to communities so local people shape the character of the very neighbourhood in which they live"

(Department of Communities and Local Government press release).

The proposals are intended to give "Local People" more involvement in drawing up the framework within which Planning Applications are considered and, in some cases, will allow those communities to grant permission for development without the requirement for a Planning Application to the Local Planning Authority (LPA).

On the face of it these proposals sound great but, if the intention is to increase local involvement in the planning process, reduce centralised costs and promote development (through the use of financial "carrots"), will it actually achieve what it sets out to?

Let us consider, first, how the current system engages with "Local People" and the strengths and weaknesses of the system:

Development of Local Plans:

Each LPA is currently required to develop a Local Development Framework (LDF) which  is the name of the new spatial planning system that was introduced by the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 to replace district-level Local Plans.  LDFs are made up of a collection of Local Development Documents (LDDs) which, taken as a whole, outline the spatial planning strategy for a local area.

In shaping the LDF, each LPA is required to carry out extensive consultation at regular stages with the local community and other interested parties (such as Architects who regularly submit applications to the LPA).

In my experience very few "normal" people take part in this consultation. on the whole responses are received from Community Groups (such as Civic Societies) - who see themselves as the self-appointed guardians of particular patches, professionals - who have to deal with the system every day (such as Architects, planners etc) and those who have vested interests in promoting development (such as developers).

Occasionally, the LPA will produce travelling displays that will be erected at Town Shows or in shopping centres to take the consultation process out to the community but this often produces relatively mundane responses - "that's pretty" or "we need more parking"!

The unfortunate truth is that most "normal" people don't have the skills to be able to understand the process of developing planning frameworks and the sheer complexity of balancing the differing pressures and long term implications that are implicit within such strategic documents - they focus instead on the things that affect them and their quality of life. 

The Application Process:

It has long been established that planning applications are publicised by the LPA when received. Neighbours and surrounding houses who might be affected by proposals submitted for planning are notified both in writing and by the posting of a brightly coloured notice fixed at the boundary of the application site for a minimum of 21 days.

Representations made by the public are all recorded and, if more than two are received, an application must be heard by a Planning Committee before it can be granted permission. At committee stage "local people" can speak their piece in front of the committee members (who are all elected councillors) and the applicant has the opportunity to defend their proposals.

The sad reality is that, again, most people are only interested in what affects them directly (normally in a negative way) and very rarely attend these important meetings out of a sense of civic duty or to support applications that they feel would be beneficial to their area or town.

This week I had personal experience of one Planning Committee meeting and was also interested to follow the tweets of Andrew Johnson who is Leader of Harlow Council as he attended a very different Planning Committee in Harlow (as a spectator).

On behalf of a Client I attended a meeting of the London Borough of Redbridge Regional Planning Committee to speak in favour of an application for which I was the agent. the application was for the extension to a childcare nursery and had been recommended for approval by officers. Having ensured that I arrived some fifteen minutes early I was somewhat surprised to find that, when the meeting started, I was the only member of the public apart from one other applicant!

Andrew, on the other hand, was tweeting regularly from a Planning Committee meeting in Harlow that was considering, amongst other non-contentious applications, two items that had stirred up considerable local public emotion. As a result his meeting was packed to the rafters with opponents of the applications in question. 

So will an agenda of "increased localism" result in an improved planning system with lowered centralised costs and an increase in development?

I remain to be convinced!

Firstly, mechanisms already exist that allow certain development to take place without the need for a planning application. This mechanism is called Permitted Development (PD) and it is a consistent set of rules that apply nationally and have been structured to ensure that any developments undertaken under this "relaxation" of the normal procedures are modest and neighbour friendly. Unless neighbourhood plans are going to allow development in excess of that allowed under PD they will simply be ignored in favour of the PD limits.

If local neighbourhood groups are to be allowed to approve schemes that go beyond PD limits, thus cutting cost centrally within LPAs, what training are they going to be given to enable them to consider the wider implications of their decisions and what safeguards are going to be put in place to ensure that decisions are made on the merits of the scheme as opposed to how big the brown envelope is?

The obvious route for enabling this is to use the existing Parish Council structure - allowing their Planning Committees to make decisions whereas now they can only comment on applications to the LPA. The fundamental problem with this approach is that almost every Parish Council I have had the "joy" of coming into contact with have been fundamentally against development on their patch and most of them are dominated by one or two individuals who drive through their particular agenda.

Secondly, if the aim is to engage "local people" in the town planning process then the existing process is not actually broken, opportunities exist throughout the life of an application for the public to comment, force an application to committee and then speak up in a public meeting. even in the context of the LPA developing strategic plans the public have every opportunity to make their comments known and to influence how a town is developed in the longer term.

In summary, the current system is not broken in the way that those with limited knowledge of the system think. Most decisions are taken by professional planning officers who test an application against planning policy that has been developed by other professionals who have taken into consideration those representations that have been made. The Planning Committee process is, on the face of it, a robust, democratic process and gives those who are interested the opportunity to participate in the planning process.

The fact that people only wish to get involved if an application affects them directly and they percieve that it will have a negative impact can not be blamed on the system!

Is the current system perfect? Of course not!

As someone who submits Planning Applications to a variety of LPAs every month, I know all too well how the system has become more drawn out, more bureaucratic and more costly over the past five years. I also know how poor the training and knowledge of some of those involved in the process can be.

Once upon a time a Planning Application simply consisted of drawings (plans, sections and elevations - proposed and exisiting) and an application form. Nowadays a valid application may consist of the drawings, application form, design and access statements, ground contamination surveys, sustainability reports, bat surveys, tree surveys, tree protection plans, lifetime homes checklists and any number of other "local requirements". All of these take time to prepare and, I guess, involve planning officers having to wade through reams of paperwork - all of this before the aesthetic impact of a proposal is considered!

I have learnt that if you want to reduce costs you reduce paperwork. The faster someone can process something the cheaper it is!

In addition  the system is also suffering from a lack of appropriate training. Councillors and officers alike have to take into account any number of, often, conflicting issues when making their decisions and I am always shocked at how poorly informed Councillors are on issues of design and urban planning. Decisions made at committee stage are all too often preceded by ill-informed, inaccurate debate where incorrect statements by a councillor of an applicants case or scheme can't be corrected by the applicant and can often colour subsequent discussions and thus the decision.

To give you an example, my application to Redbridge was refused (I'm not bitter - we'll win on appeal) because of a lack of on-site parking. The councillors decided that, despite of the evidence provided to them (which they clearly hadn't read) there was going to be a significant increase in vehicular movements. Despite having clearly set out how the nursery was operating (sessions in the morning and afternoon) and stating clearly that the demand would only be limited to very short periods of time, the councillor decided to base their decision on the opinion of a member who "had done the whole nursery thing 15 years ago and everyone drives" - the fact that the nursery funding structure has completely changed since then which has completely changed the profile of the "average" client was completely ignored - his incorrect statement was taken as fact despite the evidence contained in our submission!

To be fair, Harlow Council's Planning Committee this week made some very difficult decisions - one of which was to approve an application despite significant public disquiet - but they are supported by an increasingly well equipped Development Control Team and they are prepared to listen to their officers opinions and advice - something Redbridge did not!

So what's the solution?

If I were Mr Pickles I would:

1. Scrap the plans for local neighbourhood plans and instead invest the money in establishing a programme that encourages people to recognise that it is a civic duty to be interested in the planning process and that attending a planning committee meeting can give them the opportunity to support what they see as positive applications as well as objecting to the applications that they dislike.

2. Review the rules for speaking at planning committee meetings so that it becomes easier for people to speak (at present you have to give at least 24 hours notice of your intention to speak) and for applicants to correct incorrect statements - there needs to be more dialogue with the public.

3. Spend the next month talking to people like me - small to medium practitioners who have very little influence in shaping Government policy but bear the brunt of its implications and asking our opinion about where the system fails the public;

4. Review the requirements for supporting documents in the Planning Application system - perhaps make it such that if an application is being lodged by a member of a recognised proffessional institute (RIBA, ARB, RICS, CIAT etc) then the requirements for some documents that relate to quality of design can be dropped in recognition of their proffessional training;

5. Invest money in specific training for councillors on Planning Law, Design and Urban design so that they are equipped for their role on planning committees - perhaps such training should be a prerequisite for membership of a planning committee?

So, Mr Pickles, if you get to read this blog entry - feel free to ring me or DM me via twitter - I'd love to discuss this with you further before you make a final decision!

For everyone else - normal rules apply, feel free to comment as I'd love to hear your thoughts!

What impact a Hung Parliment?

So the election is finally over (almost) and in theory at least, we know what the next few years holds for us in terms of political leadership. Of course, I am assuming that a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will actually happen and will last more than a few months.

The question that we still don't really have any answers to is how the new Government's policies will really affect architectural practices like mine.

One thing that we can probably safely assume is that, in return for supporting the Conservative Government, the Lib Dems will secure a referendum on electoral reform and some sort of input into the reform of the tax system but it is unlikely that they will be able to exert much influence over other areas of policy.

So this leaves us looking at the Conservative Election Manifesto for clues.

On the face of it there aren't that many policy proposals that are specific to Architects, in fact none of the Parties has really set out any "architectural" policy proposals during the campaign. Of the Tory manifesto pledges, I could only really find a few that I thought would have a significant impact on what we do, these are as follows:

- Abolishing Regional Assemblies and Regional Planning, devolving those powers to local partnerships of businesses and Councils.

- Rewarding Councils for building new homes, especially affordable homes.

- The creation of Local Housing Trusts to allow local communities to build the homes they need.

- Strengthening the powers of Local Authorities to stop "infil" and "backland" development.

- Extension of Government procurement to small and medium sized businesses.

The truth of the matter is that the policies outlined above will not really affect the majority of practices  and despite much rhetoric on the doorstep about simplifying the planning process, no specific promises are made within the manifesto, nor is there any statement about design quality in publicly procured buildings.

True, for some practices (and certainly local planners) the abolition of the Regional Assemblies and Regional Planning infrastructure will have a huge knock on effect, but for those of us who have more modest practices, it is likely to be something that will pass almost unnoticed.

The emphasis on local communities building new homes is interesting and could, if implemented, bring a new stream of work into local practices. However, past experience has shown most local architects that their Local Authorities are unwilling to "risk" using small practices preferring instead the perceived security of a "brand" architectural practice. Unless the Conservatives can incentivize Local Authorities to look locally for Consultants, much of this new house building will, once again, be delivered by the mass house builders and their 'designers' and any sense of local character will be sacrificed for standardised house types.

The reality is that, for the last ten years or so, many small architects have increasingly been surviving on a diet of private clients doing small developments - often on backland or infil sites. the loss of these development opportunities could choke that regular supply of work and, unless it is replaced by an alternative source of work, this could lead to the extinction of small, independent practices as they are forced out of the market, merge with others in the same position or are simply swallowed up by bigger firms.

The other great unknown is whether the coalition government will scale back or call time on the Building Schools for the Future programme. For firms like mine this will not have a significant impact as we are already excluded from this work due to our size. It could however force many practices to reevaluate how they secure work and in which sectors they want to be active.

The truth of the matter is that we have no idea what will unfold in the next few months or years, the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain.

The funny thing is that, as a practice, we have been seeing an increase in both enquiries and actual commissions in the period that led upto the General Election. I think that many people were convinced that, by now, there would be a new government in power and that things would be much more certain than they are, lets hope they don't get cold feet!

In the vain hope that someone with some clout might read this blog, here are my suggestions for policies that a coalition government could introduce to make the business of a local Architect more profitable and sustainable:

Local Authority Projects:

- All Local Authority building projects to be delivered using directly employed consultants to ensure that the Local Authorities retain true control over quality and design.
- All Local Authority consultants to be employed through a simple tender process that recognises the fact that, in the case of "chartered" consultants, a high level of professionalism is guaranteed to ensure that even the smallest practice can compete with confidence.
- Professional Indemnity Insurance levels required on Local Authority projects to be set at a level that is appropriate to the scale of the project to ensure that realistic insurances are held by consultants and that small practices are not excluded from projects that they could otherwise carry out.
- Local Authority procurement guidance to place an emphasis on using local consultants, where possible to ensure that local capital expenditure is reinvested into the local economy rather than being lost to other regions.

Planning System:

- All Planning Officers to hold, or be undergoing training to hold, a design related qualification to ensure that design is at the forefront of the appraisal and decision making process.
- All Planning Committee members to be required to undergo regular CPD and design related training to ensure that the committee have at least a basic understanding of design issues and the construction industry.
- All Planning Applications to be signed, prior to submission, by a Chartered Architect (RIBA), Surveyor (RICS) or member of the CIAT to ensure that all applications submitted are of an appropriate design quality and accompanied by all the appropriate supporting information.
- All Local Authorities to establish design review panels of local design professionals and planning professionals to review all major applications prior to Planning Committee decisions to ensure that elected members have formal access to local design expertise.

Until then, we'll continue to muddle on providing our Clients with the high quality service and professionalism that they have grown to expect from us and hope that, through a growing reputation, we too can grow to compete with the big boys!