Planning Bill

We are all in favour of good design but I have an awful feeling that one commissioner with design expertise will always be in the wrong place at the wrong time and so will have a very difficult life. However, I think that the commission should be required to pay attention to design and that it should be able to purchase design expertise if it feels the need for it. That would be a satisfactory solution. I once had to talk to the senior partner of a certain London firm about his business. He lived in, and his firm worked from, a building that I would have said was designed by quantity surveyors. We used to have many of those in London. It was a very profitable business and I asked him why he did not set to and produce a decent building. He said, ““Our business is to provide good service for our clients and not to leave articles of national heritage””. Unfortunately, that is a common attitude. In my days at County Hall I was responsible for many of these quantity surveyor-designed buildings, but one has to remember that, going back to the 1950s and 1960s, which was when I began in public life, that was the height of architectural expertise. Those buildings were designed to cost limits and architects were ingenious at producing more building for less cash. One could admire that but the bill came home about 15 years later as the buildings began to fall to bits. We had a study done that showed that you could afford to double the cost of the building for a 5 per cent annual saving in running costs. Building design improved immediately. That is another factor that everyone needs to keep in mind and it applies to all buildings. As has been said, good design is fundamental to the acceptance even of very utilitarian buildings.