PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Professional bodies and higher education providers must review their ethos, course structure, accreditation criteria and appraisal systems to reflect a radically new way of thinking. In my capacity of Urban Design Group East Midlands Regional Convenor, I am championing the introduction of a national Urban Design Accreditation, and the revision of the ARB course accreditation process and criteria to reflect a more site-responsive approach to design.

DESIGN QUALITY

The disparity between the context of architecture courses and real life practice in the UK means that new graduates are often unprepared for work under current market conditions and legislative frameworks. This is reflected in a consistent lack of design quality in planning applications and pre-application submissions. Nottingham’s Design Quality Framework aims to mitigate the impact of this issue on local authority resources. My work on Redrow Placemaking, co-created alongside the house-builders and Stefan Kruczcowski, aims to set up design quality standards and an internal auditing system for the firm. My concern for design quality led me to engage in journalism and to contribute to a number of publications and broadcasts. I was an external expert advisor to the North East Derbyshire District Council Urban Design Academy and I am a local host for the Place Alliance. I also sit on the Design: Midlands and South West review panels.

FLEXIBLE PLANNING POLICY

The Design Quality Framework (DQF) for Nottingham is possibly the first group of Supplementary Planning Documents (SPD) in the UK that is completely flexible and therefore easy to adapt; a type of planning that can incorporate changes regularly. The documents are arranged by topic and they are all tied together by an overarching Overview brief that gives context and sets the core aims and objectives for the package. The flexibility feature was extremely important for the City Council in the context of the Carbon Neutral 2028 Action Plan. A flexible SPD allows the introduction of new evidence-based best practice faster than traditional policy adoption mechanisms. The framework operates through an interactive online platform that includes a link where the public can comment and input ideas for improvement and planning development. If appropriate, these are taken on board in forthcoming editions or in new guides.

The content of each DQF guide was informed by two main mechanisms: comprehensive audits of design quality that evaluated both process and product of planning applications in the city, and the views of those who engaged in the process. Participants included Nottingham City Council staff, local groups and organisations, local built environment practices, residents associations, disability groups, students, academics, local school pupils, businesses and members of the public. Every DQF guide has two main components: guidance on planning processes and information sharing and a set of key design criteria with justification and examples.

GRASSROOTS PLANNING POLICY

The interactive element of the framework made it possible for community groups and organisations to submit proposals for two new guides within weeks of the launch. The first example of bottom-up SPD was the Community Engagement Guide, developed in collaboration with Community Organisers Notts. For this guide, the traditional consultation process was abandoned in favour of a continuum engagement strategy, taking constantly emerging comments and ideas on board to build up the contents. The ambitious criteria set meant that staff, industry and the public would require up-skilling to deliver the expectations in practice. To resolve this issue, the partnership set up a Community Programme to Learn and Action in the City Environment (Co-PLACE). The initiative aims to deliver the up-skilling through a multi-agency learning centre. Simultaneously, the programme is creating new tools for continuous community engagement in planning and delivering social value through the process. The centre operates at Nottingham’s Urban Room, a community hub dedicated to debate, explore and understand the past, present and future of Nottingham’s built environment.

The Wellbeing Design Guide engagement process was entirely led, delivered and documented by a community group called Nottingham Good Food Partnership (NGFP) with collaboration from Community Organisers. The leading group conducted and documented the engagement process and they produced the contents of the guide, which were transferred into design criteria in partnership with the Local Authority. The Wellbeing Design Guide is another ambitious document: the call for innovation meant that meeting the criteria on the ground would require up-skilling across officers, designers and stakeholders alike. This time, NGFP and Nottingham City Council are using the Co-PLACE learning platform to deliver practical, hands-on learning sessions on the technical elements of the design criteria through a programme called Climate Adaptation Learning and Action (CALA).

The DQF and its Co-PLACE learning centre are demonstrating how grassroots planning is not only possible but also beneficial to everyone involved.