Design control — bridging the professional divide, part 1: A new framework

The design quality of development in new and established environments frequently represents the clearest outward expression of planning effort and the means through which local populations most readily evaluate the role and success of the planning and development process. With support for local authorities to pursue more interventionist and proactive design agendas coming from central government in the UK, local authorities and the populations they represent may less readily stand for the laissez-faire approaches to design control necessarily adopted in the past. In this new context, Part 1 of this paper explores the new framework for design control in England. It begins by identifying the established critiques of design control, which are subsequently used as a means to examine the recent changes in government advice in the form of (revised) Planning Policy Guidance Note 1: General Policy and Principles (1997). In Part 2 the responses of the full range of development, professional and amenity bodies to the guidance are examined in detail. The analysis is undertaken as a means to explore whether the about-turn in government thinking on design has infused through all the key players in the planning/development process, or whether the age-old interprofessional antagonisms on this subject are still alive and well. Part 2 concludes by drawing out any cross-professional common ground, and by comparing the established critiques of design control identified in Part 1 against the consensus positions suggested by the analysis in Part 2.