Southern Comfort - TrustNews December 2006
This informal gathering of Civic Societies was hosted on October 14th by the Portsmouth Society and was a most successful and enjoyable event. Representatives of societies from Weymouth in the West to Lewis and Shoreham in the East as well as those from Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire assembled in Portsmouth Guildhall where we were welcomed by the Lord Mayor before hearing a fascinating address by Paul Grover, Director of the Solent Architecture Centre. Paul's enthusiasm and innovative approach to furthering good design and its recognition by members of the public gave us all great encouragement. For example he told us about the celebrations for the Titanic anniversary in Southampton that employed interactive mobile phone information points attached to buildings to tell their stories. He suggested many other ideas for encouraging more people, especially the younger members of the community, to take an interest in their environment and its planning.
Michael Carden followed and emphasised how lucky we are to have the benefit of Paul's expertise at the Architecture Centre especially as our educational system gives no encouragement to visual appreciation and our children are weaned off drawing at an early age whereas children in Italy, for example, are just as likely to be interested in architecture as in football.
Michael referred to the importance of 'planning' to everyone - especially civic societies - which should make planners respected and admired civil servants occupying sought-after jobs. But, he asked "who cares about planners? " They themselves do not value working in the public sector and are draining away to the private sector; the general public, led by the media, call all town hall officials and councillors "planners" and resent them; civic societies regard them as 'nice guys' probably sharing their goals but hampered by excessive pressures; lastly the government do not care for planners. He then pointed out some of the many burdens piled on to the system that were being experienced in Winchester:
- policy changes imposing extra duties such as sustainability and design despite the shortage of staff and skills, and lack of time and money to pay for them
- extensive reorganisation - the department now has a director who is not a professional planner and has many other responsibilities
- the imposition of targets which may sound sensible but which are disastrous in relation to quality - a crude tool unrelated to the variety of tasks and distorting priorities. This has been recognised as unsatisfactory in the NHS and Education but not in planning.
- The introduction of new Information Technology has added to the problems and is generally unsatisfactory due to lack of training, inadequate supervision and confusion with conflicting systems. The use of screens makes it impossible to compare and assess drawings.These, he said were just some of the problems but the result is that targets cannot be met, design suffers and morale is eroded leading to an increase in staff turnover and a loss of public respect.
Winchester believes in preconsultation, but applicants report long delays and changing advice leading to growing frustration and the lack of positive response without appropriate design input.
He commented that the Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation had resigned because he found the level of service unacceptable and no motivation to improve this situation.
In conclusion he suggested that the blame for this unhappy situation lies mostly with central government. Unfortunately the Civic Trust, the body that should be confronting the government on our behalf, is no longer a campaigning organisation, so what are we to do?
Perhaps this should be a subject for study over the coming months and be addressed at the next meeting of Southern Comfort.
In the questions session that followed, planning problems and concerns over the provision of the necessary infrastructure to support major development dominated.
In the afternoon members were offered a choice of visiting the new development at Gun wharf Quays or a tour of the Dockyard area to round off a very stimulating 23rd conference.