Memorandum by Grosvenor (UK and Ireland)
(CAB 32)
1. Stephen Musgrave BSc MRICS, Chief Executive,
submits evidence on behalf of Grosvenor (UK and Ireland).
2. Grosvenor is a privately-owned international
property company. It has major holdings throughout the UK and
it operates internationally with offices in North America, Continental
Europe and the Far East.
It is an investor, developer and manager
of property both in its own right, through its numerous partnerships
and through its fund management business.
3. From time-to-time Grosvenor presents
design proposals to CABE, including masterplans for mixed-use
developments and proposals for individual buildings.
4. These have recently included the masterplan
proposals for largescale mixed-use developments in Liverpool,
Preston and Bath and individual building proposals for Central
London, Cambridge and Liverpool.
5. Whenever possible, Grosvenor has had
informal discussions with CABE officers prior to submitting planning
applications and before CABE formal reviews. Such discussions
have been extremely useful in helping Grosvenor to ensure that
it is achieving the standard of work to which we aspire and are
being sufficiently creative. They have also enabled us to benefit
from experience elsewhere and from arms length consideration of
some issues in which the project team have become immersed. We
are aware that CABE's involvement has also acted as a spur to
our designers.
6. In the case of Liverpool, a CABE representative
attended early workshops when the principles of the masterplan
were being debated amongst stakeholders, the general public and
Grosvenor's consultants. They also contributed to discussions
Grosvenor and Liverpool City Council had about the most appropriate
way in which to take that project through the planning process;
giving the developer sufficient certainty as early as possible,
while giving the planning authorities sufficient control over
subsequent design development.
Those discussions involved the Local Planning
Authority, English Heritage, CABE and the Government Office for
the North West. The result has enabled the project to proceed
on the basis of a comprehensive masterplan that settled the use,
footprint and massing of all thirty buildings, together with public
transport, highways and servicing issues and the results of thorough
environmental assessments, while leaving time for ongoing design
and consultation as the design of the individual buildings and
of the extensive public realm proceeds. It gave the Stakeholders
adequate time for financial negotiations and legal agreements
and for proceeding with compulsory purchase and road closure orders.
CABE made a significant contribution to the discussions that resulted
in this approach, which is now used as an exemplar for largescale,
urgently needed city centre redevelopment.
7. Grosvenor has also benefited in its work
from the various publications that CABE has produced; and from
the conferences that it has organised, in which Grosvenor has
been pleased to participate.
8. Grosvenor's experience with CABE's formal
design panel reviews, however, has been somewhat less satisfactory.
In our opinion, insufficient time and space is allocated for the
proper explanation and discussion of sometimes very complex issues.
Sometimes the lack of preparation and attention by some reviewers
has not been worthy of the importance which clients and consultants
attach to the reviews; nor commensurate with the weight that decision-makers
attach to comments made at the reviews and to the published reports.
In our opinion, the reviews would be more effective and much more
useful if a small number of relevantly experienced reviewers were
able to give sufficient time to properly listen to explanations
and to discuss proposals in depth.
9. Finally, we welcome CABE's efforts to
broaden the experience and attitudes on which it draws to more
fully embrace provincial architectural, urban design and planning
practitioners, and academics; and to try harder to develop a national
consensus regarding good design, instead of what sometimes appeared
to be a rather narrow, metropolitan point of view.
10. In general, Grosvenor supports the Commission
and looks forward to working with it in the future.
| 
