Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
14 JUNE 2004
MRS MARGARET
FORD AND
MR DAVID
HIGGINS
Q40 Andrew Bennett: This bit of jargon,
"a design code". Can you explain it a little more to
the Committee.
Mr Higgins: Design codes are very
early days. We used them first in Northampton and Upton. They
are particularly applicable to sites where there is a very long
timetable of developments and, in the case of Upton, eventually
over 15 years, there are probably 6,000 to 7,000 houses. So, on
the first 200 houses that we released at Upton, it is important
that we have a framework. I have brought a brochure which I can
leave with you of a typical design code. So, this is how a design
code is prepared and what it does is show in a street how the
houses relate to the street, the landscaping principles, the principles
of urban planning, and this then becomes a document that is prepared—and
this one is actually in Telford, it is a new one—in consultation
with the community but then this becomes the document that the
private developers work to. It certainly does not restrict taste
or style within that but it gives an overall framework to that.
Q41 Andrew Bennett: How does it differ
from a master plan for an area?
Mr Higgins: It is done in partnership
with the master plan. So, the master plan on this particular diagram
here is on page 4 and it shows usages, industrial . . . On the
next page, it goes one level detail from that which shows the
actual type of housing and the layout. So, it gives more of a
three-dimensional spatial plan whereas a master plan gives more
of a two-dimensional plan.
Q42 Andrew Bennett: So, you have talked
to the local community about what they want to be in the design
code.
Mr Higgins: Yes.
Q43 Andrew Bennett: But they are not
going to live there, are they?
Mr Higgins: Hopefully some of
them will live there. We certainly talk to people and engage in
the local community.
Q44 Andrew Bennett: The biggest group
when you are putting new housing in is the people who are coming
into the new housing. How do you find out what they want as opposed
to what the people in the original community want who probably
do not want the new housing there in the first place?
Mr Higgins: In the case of Upton
which is the first one, the whole process of inquiry by design
involved up to 100 people. It was run by the Prince's Trust and
it involved a wide range of charitable organisations, environmental
groups, through to community representatives.
Q45 Andrew Bennett: So, it was not local
people, it was experts from outside?
Mr Higgins: That is correct.
Mrs Ford: No, there was a lot
of local people there and crucially the local authority were a
key part of that and the council were very, very supportive of
that whole process and it was very important to us that the democratic
representatives were completely involved in that as well. A lot
of the people in the neighbourhoods adjacent to the urban extension
were involved. So, though they might not be moving to the area,
they may well be and certainly will be leaving cheek by jowl with
that.
Q46 Andrew Bennett: How is that design
code going to be enforced?
Mr Higgins: Once the design code
is agreed, it forms part of the planning rule and then, as you
go for detailed design, the detailed design process is much quicker
because it refers to the design coding.
Q47 Andrew Bennett: So, if someone wants
to break the design code, what do they do?
Mr Higgins: They have to go back
for further planning.
Q48 Mr O'Brien: We took evidence from
John Egan on the Egan Review and obviously the advisory board
is made up of various organisations including English Partnerships.
How do you see English Partnerships assisting and taking forward
the recommendations made in the Egan Review?
Mrs Ford: We fully support the
outcomes of the Egan Review and we had actually started our own
piece of work looking at skills and regeneration prior to Sir
John Egan's taskforce being set up. There was nothing that came
out of our work that was at all inconsistent with what he was
doing. We are trying to do four or five practical things in support
of the Egan Review. One is that, given that there is so much demand
for regeneration professionals now, we are all, in a sense, starting
to rob Peter to pay Paul as people move around. What we are trying
to do is increase the supply of people with experience in this
area. So, we are setting up, for example, a new graduate programme,
a fast-track graduate programme, working with the University of
Reading, the University of Cambridge and other institutions joining
those universities who have a good track record in the land sciences.
We are trying to offer opportunities on behalf of ourselves and
the RDAs, so that we take several dozen graduates each year. We
will put them through a programme that has time with English Partnerships,
the RDA, the major local authority in their area, and with the
private development company. Frankly, we are trying to sell the
public sector to people at the start of their career as a really,
really exciting career option, and to create opportunities for
them to do that. I have worked with the RDA chairs to see how
big we can make this programme, try to bring people in and then
create opportunities for them in each of our organisations, proper
opportunities after a one-year or two-year programme. We are setting
up a continuing professional development programme, again led
by English Partnerships but including regeneration specialists
from the RDAs, from the local authorities, from some of the big
development companies, and from some of the people who ought to
be interested in this, like the big legal firms that have property
specialists. Again, we are working to a programme that has four
or five different programmes each year where these people come
together. They share experience and try to crack problems of big
complex developments, for example. We have a range of programmes
that we are now going to lead to try and do something about that.
At the other end of the spectrum, as I said to Sir John Egan,
I understand the focus and regeneration of professionals, but
what about getting enough skilled tradesmen to do what we want
to do as well, because that to me is an even more pressing problem?
There is not much we can do as a national agency around that because
the skills are not really our remit; but we are looking at modern
methods of construction, off-site manufacturing and a range of
other ways where we can at the same time build quality into new
developments, being less reliant on traditional skills. That is,
to my mind, an unsatisfactory part of the equation. I do not think
we have the system of apprenticeships and training right yet for
craftsmen, but we are trying to do what we can do as a national
agency for regeneration of professionals in a very practical way.
Q49 Mr O'Brien: What kind of timescale
are you looking at to have these skills available to develop the
sustainable communities?
Mrs Ford: On the things that are
at our own hand, the regeneration skills and experience in graduate
programmes and so on, we will open up from September onwards.
Those programmes will be ready to start from then, and we will
be looking actively to recruit graduates in the next two months.
Q50 Mr O'Brien: What about the plumbers
and the—
Mrs Ford: I wish I had an answer
to that, but I do not.
Q51 Mr O'Brien: You do not have bar charts
or anything that would give us some indication as to what you
are thinking about in being able to offer these skills?
Mrs Ford: We do not have a locus
in that. We are not an employment and skills council; it is not
our core brief, so we do not really have any way of influencing
that, except our own developments.
Q52 Mr O'Brien: We are talking about
undergraduates and other schemes.
Mrs Ford: We will do that, yes.
Q53 Mr O'Brien: When do you expect to
have people of that calibre in place to help with the development
of the sustainable communities?
Mrs Ford: We will start those
programmes in September, and we will keep those going every year
for however long it takes.
Q54 Chairman: Picking up on what you
were saying about the modern methods of construction and the fact
that you are beginning to look at those, is there an idea around
that you might start to give your seal of approval to certain
of those rather than others? At the moment, it seems that there
is just a general feeling that we have got to get on with modern
methods of construction, without anyone taking real ownership
of the particular methods that might be used and what consequences
might be down the line in terms of failure and who then will be
held accountable.
Mr Higgins: Certainly. Clearly,
the Housing Corporation has its own standards of modern methods
of construction. We do not have a set policy across our entire
sites on modern methods of construction; we do, however, have
sites in terms of EcoHome standards, in terms of sustainability
and energy usage from Eco-Homes to BREEAM standards, and across
all of our projects we have had BREEAM as a minimum requirement
and EcoHomes category 9. We escalate that on our best practice
sites, so that is a very high standing for a start in terms of
the industry. On our main flagship programmes such as Millennium
Communities Programme and our key sites in Milton Keynes, we go
to "excellent" in terms of BREEAM and 10 in terms of
EcoHomes, so we set high standards there. We are particularly
interested in the whole issue of supply chain and efficiency,
and we are working now in London on a programme where we are combining
16 sites to deliver 3,500 apartments, but we are putting it out
to tender through an OJEC process to attract new entrants into
the market and new improvements in the supply chain. That is another
initiative we are focusing on in looking at this whole issue.
Q55 Chairman: That is all very interesting,
and I am not trying to be disparaging in any way, but are you
the body that will be held accountable if, in 30 years' time,
like so many of these types of developments in the past, the properties
are failing; bits are dropping off them; you cannot find anyone
to maintain them; the manufacturers have gone out of business;
if you want odd jobs doing, there is nobody with the skills to
do them because they are completely different skills to the normal
run-of-the-mill jobs on homes? Are the bodies going to be accountable
for all this, and are you looking at it?
Mrs Ford: Frankly, if they were
built on schemes that we developed a brief for and managed the
process, of course we would have to be accountable for those,
which is why we have not rushed, as it were, to adopt wholesale
anything that says it is a modern method of construction or off-site
manufacturing. What David has described is that in each of the
strategic projects I spoke about earlier, where we are letting
development briefs to the private sector, we are looking very
carefully at what kind of methods of off-site manufacture or modern
methods of construction would be appropriate. Where that is deemed
to be appropriate, we would include that in the development brief
and ask people to come to us to describe what components of a
scheme they would propose to deliver through modern methods of
construction. We would expect our project executives to critically
assess that to make sure that it was sustainable and it was a
reasonable quality. We certainly will not just be adopting every
fad that is going on in modern methods of construction for precisely
the fear that you have expressed.
Q56 Christine Russell: Can you tell us
a little bit more about the advisory panel that you are planning
to set up to assist local authorities in processing large-scale
development proposals? One is, how big is large-scale? How do
you see what you are proposing to do, sitting side by side with
this new planning advisory service that will be introduced in
the autumn?
Mrs Ford: Can I take the first
part of that question and ask David to speak about the nature
of the applications? There are two things going on in tandem here.
English Partnerships is in the business of setting up a national
consultancy service, which is really a team of urban designers,
master planners, people who are regarded as being eminent in their
field, to work with other colleagues in EP and in the public sector.
We have been approached by a number of local authorities in particular,
and other agencies to say that they really do not have the critical
mass of expertise to be, as it were, an effective client for some
of the large-scale applications that are coming. We would lend
our colleagues to local authorities or whoever, to work with them
for a fixed period to act on the client's side for particular
kinds of developments. That is different from what Keith Hill
has announced—the Planning Advisory Service—on large-scale
applications, which is a different kind of body. That is an ODPM
resource that will happen to be housed within English Partnerships,
and it is a group of very, very experienced people who are there
to try and unblock developments that are either complex in nature
or have been a long time stuck in the planning process, to try
and facilitate those to an outcome. It is a slightly different
thing that is going on. David might be able to describe the type
of application they would look at.
Mr Higgins: It will particularly
look at projects in the growth areas.
Q57 Chairman: The Government is considering
drawing up a spatial strategy for non-transport infrastructure,
such as utilities, within the Thames Gateway. There are a couple
of questions arising from that. Is it not a bit late to be considering
setting up a spatial strategy? Should this not have come quite
some time ago? Secondly, are there some really major problems
in there that you are trying to grapple with? For example, the
costs of extra electricity supply could be so great that they
would take every bit of planning gain away from some developments,
which should be used for extra school provision and those sorts
of things as well?
Mrs Ford: If I could make a couple
of points and then hand over to David, who has been very much
more involved in this, the issue of the utilities is a particularly
important one. I wrote last week to the Chairman of Ofgem, which
is in the middle of a price control review for the electricity
supply companies, to say that it was very important that when
the regulator sets that framework, because included in that tends
to be the incentives and penalties for different types of investment,
that they take account of the need to enable the utilities to
make the kind of investments they need to make in the growth areas,
in the Gateway in particular, and to make sure that they are,
as it were, credited with that in the price controls. That is
a very, very powerful signal that Ofgem could send, and it would
be a huge help to us. It is something that came home to me, having
been involved with Ofgem in the last couple of years. That is
the first thing on the utilities.
Q58 Andrew Bennett: You are saying that
low-income families in London will have to pay through their electricity
prices for this infrastructure.
Mrs Ford: No, that is not how
it works. It is a different regime to that. When the regime is
set for electricity companies for the next five to seven years,
there are capital allowances that are always made explicit in
the price control for important things like safety, for example.
If it were transport, it would be about maintenance of the gas
mains or whatever. In this case, we are saying that we would get
some leeway for making sure that that investment was offset against
the price control. I am afraid I do not think it is as simple
as the way you have just described.
Q59 Andrew Bennett: Someone will have
to pay.
Mrs Ford: Well, we all pay at
the end of the day, and someone is going to have to pay if there
is no housing.
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