Design control in Conservation Areas - Trust Annual Report 1973
By Melville Dunbar
After the Civic Amenities Act became law in July 1967, Local Planning Authorities were required to identify and formally designate conservation areas. To implement this work some began to recruit teams of Architect/Planners. Such teams have had their greatest impact in the counties, where for the first time architectural and urban design expertise has been established in sufficient strength to significantly affect the character and quality of design policy, plan and control making. The Act has also enabled some counties to modify their existing "delegation" agreements—granted as expedients to the district councils during the fifties—so that Listed Buildings and planning applications in conservation areas could be referred to their specialist teams for design control advice. This revised procedure has had, contrary to expectations, the effect of strengthening rather than weakening the necessary bond of partnership between district and county authorities. The main reason for this is that the district councils are being given a design control service which they themselves know they could not hope to provide on their own. As a result new development in their historic towns and villages is of a higher architectural quality. This, almost without exception, has always been the aim of district officers and councillors, but the difficulties of obtaining it on their own have been insuperable.
This though is what the new Local Government (Reform) Bill, at present before Parliament, now proposes they should do ! Along with other ill-conceived planning actions, the Bill proposes to hand back all development control responsibilities in conservation areas to newly formed "district" planning authorities. In very many cases these will still be small bodies having a population of about forty to ninety thousand people and consisting usually of two or three existing rural and urban district councils joined together. Their capacity for employing the necessary specialist staff to cope with their design control responsibilities will be equally small. At best some district councils will continue to refer applications in conservation areas voluntarily to the counties or else engage consultant advice of their own—but in many other cases this will not happen and a return to the day of the "green tile roof men" operating design control will occur. The long term effects of the latter are all too easy to imagine and none will promote the cause of good architecture or urban design.
A popular piece of planning legislation—namely the Civic Amenities Act—is in effect being dismembered, and this just as many counties were really beginning to make it work. The character and identity of historic places will be eroded by the cumulative damage of mediocre design control decisions, unless the need for obtaining specialist advice—not just for historic buildings but for historic areas—is made mandatory by the new Bill.
1 Development Plan and Written Statement
At present the above documents combine with planning law to give the statutory framework within which (most) development takes place. The need for written statements to have statutory approval has to a large degree dictated their legalistic style and content. Sufficient to say that they generally confirm when, where and how development can take place but give little or no guidance on architectural or urban design matters. This is not to say that the need for good design is not repeatedly stressed, but such platitudes do no more than affirm general policy. As all embracing statements, they do not assist the designer by either giving detailed guidance or, more importantly, by helping to create the necessary social and aesthetic climate for informed architect/client relationships to develop.
This lack of detailed urban design policy has often resulted in authorities adopting a defensive and negative approach whereby "rule of thumb" planning and highway standards are elevated to the status of layout and design determinants. Such controls in practice have fostered stereo type solutions—"wide open estates" and the distorted "permissible envelopes" of commercial building—the spaces and shapes of which are invariably visually alien to the townscape character of historic settlements.
Development plans and town maps tend to be equally negative, planning being seen as a finite process with all land being given a "planned use". In historic centres, blanket commercial zonings made for almost automatic "changes of use"—from residential to shopping—and the resultant "shot away" ground floor look we see today. Declining arcadian town housing areas were often allocated for offices—as this was obviously preferable to shopping or light industry—but such zoning usually concentrates pressures which in turn tend to force out any remaining residential users. Gardens become office car parks, trees go, new buildings ignore the spatial and architectural discipline; with the result that many existing approaches to historic centres are now rendered visually meaningless.
2 Planning and Conservation Studies
A new type of planning approach was clearly called for, and the progressive counties have been endeavouring to provide this with "informal" town centre and village plans. Ministry Planning Bulletins lay down guidance for such studies and a more flexible three-dimensional approach is encouraged. Townscape surveys, which analyse spatial and architectural character, are now considered as essential components of such plans for historic settlements. Apart from helping to determine what sort of planning and highway proposals could be visually acceptable, they also assist the architect to more readily study the character and identity of a place before designing his replacement building.
Unsympathetic shopfronts, ugly signs, over zealous restoration of old buildings street furniture clutter are some of the detailed problems a townscape survey can highlight, but technical advice is need to show owners and authorities how such things can be put right. The counties can provide this by making freely available subject design policy brochures for conservation areas.
3 Subject Design Policies
The Conservation in Essex series will probably consist of at least eight such publications, six being concerned with technical problems—the brochures being in effect the county's design policy on such matters:
Conservation in Essex:
- No. 1 General Policy Statement
- No. 2 Action by Local Amenity Societies
Technical Series:
- No. 3 Street furniture
- No. 4 Historic buildings
- No. 5 Shopfronts, signs and advertisements
- No. 6 Space between buildings
- No. 7 Commercial buildings
- No. 8 Village infill development
Without a detailed elaboration of the theory and practice of design, such things tend to be written off as matters of opinion. In their absence "functional" planning controls, "rule of thumb" standards, codes of practice, and design censorship by "taste" tend to become the control determinants of local authorities. Equally planning applications continue to be made showing buildings not only badly designed in themselves but which totally ignore the architectural scale and character established by their street setting.
In historic areas, the main challenge is the creative marriage of old and new—this applies as much to street lighting schemes as to new building. The need for high aesthetic and technical skills is clearly paramount, yet the majority of planning applications (approximately 3 out of 4) continue to be made by non-architects. Subject policy brochures should help applicants to better understand the complex nature of conservation area work and as a result be prepared to engage specialist advice. Those who are not so professional in their design standards—and regrettably many architects fall into this category—will find that they at least get clear (and helpful) design refusal reasons, cross referenced to the appropriate brochures. However, these design policies will still be general in nature in that they tackle problems which occur throughout conservation areas. Specific "key" sites may still need to have tailor-made "design briefs" to serve as a guide for imminent development proposals.
4 Design Briefs
These "briefs" fit inside the planning framework of conservation area studies, informal town centre and village plans. They should firstly describe those existing site features which need to be retained—some good walling, a hedge, trees, a public footpath, a "listed" building, etc., Secondly, with the use of "spatial notation", they should outline possible building groupings, spatial sequences, vehicle and pedestrian access points, focal views, etc. "Infill sites" are necessarily treated in more detail, either with diagrams and notes indicating such things as scale, materials, height and frontage lines or else by annotated sketch proposals.
The main point of these "briefs" is that they establish a minimum design standard for development. They are advisory only. An architect can either choose to adapt and refine the broad concepts of the brief (to his client's requirements) or else opt to try and produce something better. In laying down design performance criteria, the brief should make for a better understanding by councillors, district officers, amenity societies and applicants of the problems involved. Equally, but not providing a ready made solution—as in sheer desperation some planning authorities still do—the design complexity of the problem should emerge along with the need for obtaining the services of a creative architect.
5 Design Control
In preparing a scheme, an architect should now be able to choose from the relevant planning policies and his client's brief accordingly. In this way a design can be influenced during its conceptual stages, that is, before firm lines are on paper, time and money have been expended and attitudes hardened.
The "preliminary enquiry" has this benefit too; the architect can discuss with other creatively experienced professionals—who in addition are specialists in such problems—alternative approaches and ideas. Instead of an "us and them" situation, a partnership of private and public expertise can result. This, of course, is open to abuse, principally by those who have no real design skill but who still wish to avoid the professional stigma or inconvenience of a planning refusal.
When a formal Listed Building or planning application has been made, then this has to be determined—in other words, approved or refused. Where modifications can make a proposal acceptable, then negotiations are usually in everyone's interest—time is saved and a better scheme results. Where significant changes are necessary to make an application acceptable, then a refusal on design grounds makes the planning authority's position clear and affords the applicant his right to appeal (or to try again). The objection by most architects is not to the principle of design control itself, but to the competence of people encharged with applying it and subsequent inconsistencies of approach which are fostered by a lack of detailed design policies.
Summary
Given the implications of the Bill (if approved in its present form), the question must be, how can the necessary architectural quality be consistently achieved in the "districts" who, in the main, will be without specialist advice?
One possibility is to substitute quality control for design control, by the introduction of a regionally based register of specialist conservation architects. A new statute would be necessary to ensure the obligatory use of such firms for conservation area work. The register could be compiled by a standing committee chaired by the Department of the Environment and consisting of the RIBA, Civic Trust, County Planning Officers' Society and any other bodies though appropriate. Those architects selected for the conservation register could be freed of design control (though still subject to normal planning control, plot ratio, etc.). Democratic safeguards would enable the districts to refer to a county conservation panel any scheme that caused local controversy.
Registered architects would have the benefit of a regular flow of work, enabling them to hold and recruit other specialist staff. Competition would exist within the register, but on a professional basis, namely the quality of service offered. In national terms the amount of development in conservation areas is very small (in other words, those architects not on the register would only be marginally affected) while the community need for specialist design skills to enhance historic centres is still great.