Urban Design
What is urban design?
Urban design aims to create buildings and spaces that enhance the character of the District, look good, work well, are environmentally sensitive and promise to stand the test of time.
What does the Council's urban design service offer?
The urban design service provides specialist advice and guidance relating to the design of buildings and spaces. We offer this advice to prospective planning applicants through our pre-application service. The urban design service also manages the Council's ourplace™ design initiative, issues ourplace™ quality rating certificates for new residential developments within North West Leicestershire and undertakes Building for Life assessments for both completed and planned developments.
Why does the Council employ an urban designer?
The Council employs an urban designer to provide specialist advice to the Council to improve the design of both new and existing buildings and spaces. Encouraging sustainable urban design also forms part of the 'Green Footprints Challenge' which is one of the Council's four priorities for 2010-2011.
New buildings and spaces are created following the approval of one or more planning applications. The urban designer reviews planning applications and where necessary, works closely with Planning Officers and developers to improve the quality of schemes prior to a decision being made on a planning application.
Poorly designed places may be cheaper to build but often carry social, economic and environmental costs. Often these 'negative costs' are met by the communities in which these developments are located and organisations other than the original developer. For example, if public spaces are not overlooked they are more likely to attract and suffer from crime and/or anti-social behaviour. This in turn can create public sector liabilities, for organisations such as the local Council and the Police in addition to creating places that are less pleasant to use, visit, work or live in. In a climate of reduced public sector resources, the Council believes that it must use its planning powers to guard against poorly designed buildings and spaces and in turn safeguard the overall wellbeing of our communities.
The urban designer spends a large proportion of his time working on residential led planning applications following the publication of CABE's national Housing Audits which identified significant opportunities for improving the quality of new homes and neighbourhoods.
The urban designer is also responsible for assessing all completed housing development and planning applications for housing development of ten units or more. Completed housing developments are assessed on completion, with results published in the Annual Monitoring Report. The Council has gathered data on housing quality annually since 2008.
Design Guidance
The Council is in the process of preparing its Local Development Framework. Policy H7 of the Local Plan has been saved and is to be used as the basis for the following supplementary planning guidance:
'Creating places people are proud to call home: Design Principles and Processes' - consultation planned Spring 2011.
'Creating places people are proud to call home: Achieving the Building for Life standard in North West Leicestershire' - consultation planned Spring 2011.
Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE)
CABE - the Government's Advisor on architecture, urban design and public space support us in raising the quality of the built environment.
The following publications reflect our thinking and we often refer applicants to refer to one or more of these publications. Links to these publications (which can be downloaded free of charge) are offered below to help you find them easily.
By Design: urban design in the planning system towards better practice
Design at a glance - a quick reference guide to national design policy
Design and Access Statements - how to read, write and use them
The Principles of Inclusive Design
Good Design - the fundamentals
Creating Successful Masterplans
We also highly recommend other on line resources available from CABE, in particular the video and case study resources. We highly recommend the Building for Life case study resource which provides plenty of ideas and inspiration and the '20 Building for Life criteria explained' video.
Building for Life
Building for Life is the national standard for well designed homes and neighbourhoods. The Council has adopted Building for Life as a design quality indicator for all new residential led developments of ten homes or more. However the Council does use Building for Life as a design quality indicator on smaller developments, though this is determined on a case by case basis depending on the nature of the proposed development.
We strongly recommend that applicants focus on 15 or 16 of the Building for Life criteria and use the selected criteria as a basis for pre-application discussions. The Council's Accredited Building for Life Assessor will review all residential planning applications and determine the Building for Life score. A minimum of 14 criteria must be met to meet Council expectations.
Oct 08 Design Initiative V7 (Word Document, 0.11 Mb).
Download the Building for Life criteria here.
Example of a Building for Life assessment Huntlands, Long Whatton (Excel Spreadsheet, 0.1 Mb)
The Council introduced a new Word based Building for Life template in February 2011. A copy of the current template is provided below. Applicants may wish to utilise this template.
New Building for Life template NWLDC version 2 (Word Document, 0.14 Mb).
Scoring guidelines
One point = where there is evidence to support that a scheme would fully meet a particular criterion.
Half point = where there is evidence to support that a scheme would meet a particular criterion successfully in places, but less so in others.
No point = where the scheme does not meet a particular criterion or where the evidence supplied is insufficient to support a particular criterion. We will advise you if we feel that a positive score could be justified through the provision of additional evidence and/or minor design alterations. This is usually appropriate where a scheme falls between 10 and 13 points. Schemes of 9 points or below are considered fundamentally weak in terms of design and would require a full re-design to meet the Building for Life standard.
Achieving a higher Building for Life score
Schemes that succeed at achieving the Building for Life standard are those where quality design has been the client's objective from the outset. This requires a commitment to the principles of place making and engaging talented professionals with the expertise required to create places as part of a larger, multidisciplinary team.
Applicant prepared Building for Life statements
Applicants are strongly encouraged to complete their own Building for Life assessment which should form the 'design' element of their Design and Access Statement (with the preceeding elements 'Assessment', 'Involvement' and 'Evaluation' - refer to CABE's 'Design and Access Statements - how to read, write and use them' for details). Robust evidence should be provided for each criterion applicants consider their scheme to meet. Guidance on the types of evidence that can be used to support particular criteria are illustrated in CABE's 'Evaluating Housing Proposals Step by Step' publication.
Examples of applicant prepared Building for Life assessments:
Preferred format:
Melbourne Design and Access Statement
Station Road Melbourne DS (PDF Document, 19.87 Mb) (reproduced courtesy of Davidsons Group).
Alternative format:
Land off Whitehill Road, Ellistown Design and Access Statement 22 10 09 - Ellistown DAS (PDF Document, 14.84 Mb) (reproduced courtesy of East Midlands Housing Association).
In some cases, we may ask applicants to provide us with further evidence to support their anticipated score Land Off Whitehill Rd Additional Evidence Criteria 1 (PDF Document, 5.06 Mb)
Who can be an urban designer?
Whilst their is no control over the term 'urban designer' as with some other professions, there is control over the term 'Recognised Urban Design Practitioner'. The Council strongly encourages applicants to use designers who are or are in the process of applying for Recognised Urban Design Practitioner status. The Urban Design Group is the organisation that awards Recognised Practitioner designation.
Recognised Practitioners in Urban Design
We strongly encourage applicants to ensure that their design team includes a Recognised Urban Design Practitioner (a designation awarded by the Urban Design Group). The Council's own Urban Designer is a Recognised Urban Design Practitioner.
Last updated: Wed 9th February, 2011 @ 17:35
