Examination of Witnesses (Questions 520
- 538)
WEDNESDAY 13 OCTOBER 2004
MR BOB
ROBERTS, MS
JOANNA RUSSELL
AND MR
TERRY ROBINSON
Q520 Chairman: So you take a particular
location and think, "the buildings here are like that, so
we will build them a bit like that" and then somewhere else
will be a bit different.
Mr Roberts: It is character reflecting
local materials, traditions and culture.
Q521 Joan Walley: What interests
me about it is how narrow your definition is, and how much your
definition of vernacular includes the concept of sustainable development.
This Committee went to Aberdeen and saw an absolutely cutting-edge
new build, a house that was built in the local vernacular, but
which in terms of not just its outward design but interior had
the cutting-edge of technology in terms of energy efficiency standards
and insulation. It had water conservation, and local materials
were used in the construction that would fit into our definitions
of sustainable development. I am interested to know whether your
definition of vernacular is not just one where you take something
from the dictionary and say, "it is like the black and white
houses in Cheshire" or whether it is breaking new ground
in some way like the Pompidou Centre, something which is now incorporating
an understanding amongst the public of what it means to be building
sustainable properties.
Mr Roberts: It does embrace those
broader values. It should be the modern, the creative, the exciting
use of materials to create things of beauty and usefulness; in
the same way that there was a vernacular style of Georgian England,
there could easily be a vernacular style for the 21st century,
with very high-quality, very modern, very exciting use of local
materials in a very creative way. I know you are not going to
like this but we are about to produce a report on new vernacular
design, and we are organising a little conference on it later
in the spring. We would love you to come along and see what we
are talking about. I absolutely agree with you that the product
of new vernacular design should not be a pastiche; it is not old-fashioned,
it is very new, and using, as you say, the cutting edge of design
and technology to produce things that are very, very appropriate
for their location and which are very efficient in terms of energy
use and everything else we need to achieve, to get to sustainability.
Q522 Mr Francois: Can you send us
a copy of that because when you talk about the Essex vernacular
people might think you mean something else!
Mr Roberts: Yes.
Q523 Joan Walley: For the record,
can I just say that you suggested I would not like it much, but
I would like to know about what you are organising along those
lines. Why did you feel the need to get involved in this kind
of work at the Countryside Agency?
Ms Russell: I think because we
have past experience of getting involved in design initiatives
in rural areas such as our village and town design statements
process. As Terry mentioned earlier, we were concerned that perhaps
they were looking backwards always to try and create buildings
that were a reflection of the old historic village styles, and
not looking forwards to encompass all the environmental performance
and sustainability principles you have talked about. It is about
moving that agenda forward into the 21st century so we can have
both high environmental performance but also buildings that are
appropriate in terms of their character and distinctiveness, particularly
in rural areas, because to put something brand new and innovative
and modern next to a traditional Cotswold village core might not
be seen to be appropriate; so it is how you can match the two.
Q524 Joan Walley: You would not just
restrict this to rural areas, or would you, because your remit
obviously countryside?
Mr Roberts: No, of course not.
Q525 Joan Walley: Is it a question
of you leading this, or are you responding to some demand from
the public that you should be doing this; or is it the architects
who have an interest? Who is driving it?
Ms Russell: We are leading this
because we are looking for a new design initiative to make sure
that our design initiatives encompass the sustainability principles
we have talked about, so that we can move the agenda forward.
Q526 Joan Walley: What kind of response
have you had?
Ms Russell: It is early days yet;
we have only produced this initial report and are hoping to take
it forward into a larger programme next year.
Mr Robinson: The response to the
previous stage of the village design statements, which has now
run into town design statements as well, has been extremely healthy
and enthusiastic.
Q527 Joan Walley: Going back to our
earlier discussion about planning, would you see difficulties
in terms of getting standards linked into building regulations
possibly as well, linked into the planning regime? In my constituency,
I am finding a world of difference between avowed intent and willingness
of developers coming in to want to do anything other than the
bog-standard building.
Mr Roberts: The sustainable construction
work that Sir John Harman has been involved in and published is
pointing exactly in that direction, is it not, of using the building
regulations and other existing mechanisms to encourage high-quality
sustainable development? I think we have to be optimistic about
that and have to encourage and push it.
Joan Walley: Perhaps I can use your best
practice with the developers interested in my constituency.
Q528 Sue Doughty: On the topic of
encouraging developers, what we are really seeking is a little
bit more about requiring developers, because councils try to oversee
these designs with the worthiest of intentions in regard to sustainability,
but they too see these things disappearing away, because once
somebody comes to test the contract, unless there is a very hard
requirement in the local plan and everywhere else, they will challenge
when the costs start mounting up, and that is the first plank
that goes away. How do you see this problem between aspiration
and clear requirement?
Ms Russell: It is absolutely essential
that the planning system is used to set out not only a framework
for development but the requirements that developers must meet,
the conditions that a development has to meet to be sustainable
to fill all the community's aspirations in terms of what it can
provide. We think it is absolutely essential that the new plans
are setting out in no uncertain terms all those requirements—but
that is provided developers and local communities have been engaged
in the planning system at the outset so that there is a consensus
about what should be provided so you are signed up to that vision
of what that development will look like. Once you have got that
vision and that participation, and people are signed up to it,
the planners should set out what is required from development.
Tools such as the concept statements we talked about are a way
of doing that; it is a way of setting out what this development
on this particular site should look like, what facilities it should
provide, what the standard of building should be and all the requirements
to ensure high-quality development.
Mr Roberts: You lock that into
the deal with the permission. It is going a step further than
saying "build on this land". You are locking into the
deal some quite specific conditions about the nature of the development.
After that, it is down to the local planning authority to enforce
it.
Mr Robinson: The development industry,
when we tested these ideas among them several years ago, before
we came out with our planning policy, said, "that is fine
by us so long as we are all on a level playing-field, and so long
as this is made clear early enough on so that we do not pay a
price for land which means we cannot afford it in our budget."
It might be a bit late to set this hare running, but when the
Barker Review makes a proposal for some sort of way of extracting
money for the public good from the uplift that occurs when land
gets designated as development land, it is something that has
got something going for it and is worth thinking about.
Q529 Mr Challen: I have one question
about the new vernacular. It strikes me that part of the old vernacular
of the English countryside are places like Ferrybridge and Drax,
the fossil-fuelled power stations, leading to all sorts of pylons
and other rather ugly features stretched across fields and so
on. In terms of new vernacular, are you integrating things like
micro-power generation into building design and the development
of housing estates so that from the very beginning that is integrated
into that a community power scheme, rather than saying, "that
is not for us; that is for some old industrial area where they
have a power station"?
Mr Roberts: The answer is "yes".
One of the things we are closely involved in is the Community
Renewables Initiative, which is very much aimed at very directly
helping local communities to come up with their own proposals
for the use of renewable energy, for their own benefit and also
of course for the wider benefit to society. It is trying to leapfrog
straight into the community and get them to think about what they
would like, what would be good for them, rather than having things
done to them and rather than somebody else deciding that the best
way they can get their power is from whatever it is—a generating
station 50 miles away. They can think themselves about what the
choices and alternatives are, and can be given direct help with
the very detailed technical issues that they come up against when
they want to use local power generation; so we are very much into
that.
Q530 Mr Challen: How advanced is
that work and what kind of reception has it had?
Mr Roberts: It has been running
for a couple of years now and it has had quite a good reception.
We can send you details about the schemes—and we are into
reality here—that have been created on the ground using
various varieties of technology. It is real. Like everything else,
it comes under constant pressure because there is lots of competition
and, at the moment, we are thinking about whether or not or how
we can actually keep it going in the future, but it has been very
successful.
Q531 Mr Challen: What do you mean,
whether or not you can keep it going? Surely this is something
that has to be kept going. Is it a question of money or resources?
Mr Roberts: It is a question of
money.
Q532 Mr Challen: So, the builders
are not saying, "Here you are, here is some cash from our
vast profits, so let us do more of this work"?
Mr Roberts: The scheme is being
funded by DTI at the moment; the money that we are spending on
it actually comes to us from DTI which is a nice change.
Q533 Mr Challen: How much is that?
Mr Roberts: I would need to write
to you on that but it is the in order of a couple of million pounds
a year I think. I would need to write to you on that to get it
right and I will do that.[8]
Q534 Mr Challen: Can we turn to the
quality of life assessments that you have developed with English
Heritage, English Nature and the Environment Agency. In what way
is that different to what the Government approach is, if it is
indeed different at all?
Mr Robinson: I do not know of
anything the Government have come forward with which is similar
to it. It is really a framework for a community brokerage to go
on where the community does do things. It says, "What is
special about living here?" and that is not just environmental,
it is whether it has a good dinner party circuit or something.
It is really free for all. You get catalogued what is special
to the people there and they go through a much more difficult
process of saying, "What of that is tradable? What is actually
sacrosanct?" So, what is capital and what is tradable? On
the basis of that, they then take forward what is tradable on
what circuit, and what are the terms that we would extract if
we were prepared to give up some of this and what would we expect
back, and it actually results in a framework through which you
can take much more informed and much more confident decisions
about the sort of integration of benefits that we were talking
about earlier.
Q535 Mr Challen: Would it be possible
for you to characterise, if you like, how, say, one place in a
town which did not have this part of this development as part
of the process against and another part that did? Would you be
moving from some sort of bland, horrible and bleak area to some
sort of Prince Charles-like arcadia? What actual difference would
you notice on the ground as a result of using this assessment?
Mr Robinson: You would notice
development and decisions about change being taken which were
far better controlled and there would be far better buying by
the community because they had made up their own minds about what
they were not going to give up under any circumstances and the
terms under which they were prepared to see other things alter.
Mr Roberts: I think the critical
point was made at the beginning. This is not just about environment,
it is about what people want. So, you might not actually see,
visually, a big difference between one place and another but hopefully,
where this exercise has been gone through, you would be getting
things which people have actually said they want and they will
themselves have prioritised that they want. That might not be
visible but it might be tangible in other ways in terms of community
satisfaction.
Q536 Mr Challen: Is this what used
to be known as popular planning back in the late `70s and early
`80s?
Mr Roberts: I do not know, I am
not familiar with that.
Q537 Mr Challen: It is a more democratic
approach.
Mr Roberts: Yes, it is involving
people and asking them what they want rather than telling them
what they want.
Mr Robinson: It is more than that.
It is driving people towards marshalling their ideas around the
idea of change and then stating the terms under which that change
can be broken.
Q538 Chairman: Well, I wish someone
would tell the developers in my constituency! Thank you very much
indeed for your evidence. Is there anything more that you would
like to say?
Mr Roberts: I would just like
to make a couple of points to leave you with. I get the impression
that you think a lot of what we say is a bit sort of soft and
cuddly and that it is idealistic. Yes, we are idealistic actually,
because, if we are not, if we do not start off, as I said earlier,
aiming at something which is good, then we are doomed. Because
if we start off saying, "This is not doable, development
will always be bad", then you are definitely doomed. You
have to start off with some ideals and we have some ideals and
we have set them out in the paper. We also have some quite hard-edged
things that we have said as well. We have said that we are not
into `predict and supply' which is what we think Barker is moving
back towards. We think that is wrong. It has all the hallmarks
of transport policy which says, "If only we could build enough
roads, we would get rid of the traffic jams." It sounds the
same. We thought we had got rid of that and we do not want to
go back to that. We do not want the planning system to be bypassed,
superseded or overridden by anything. We want the planning system
to be given the chance to work and given the resources to work
and that is pretty hard edged, that is quite real. We think there
is something quite interesting in Barker about returning financial
benefit from development to the community, this business of actively
pursing measures to share windfall gains. Unfortunately, it is
then spoilt by talking about them disappearing into the Treasury
as a funding stream for other policies, which we do not like.
We think it is really interesting about harnessing the significant
uplift in values. We really are looking for definite results on
the ground and we are not going to be fobbed off with promises—in
relation to this business about new growth areas. We want to see
this new infrastructure appearing, as it did around Amsterdam
after the war and as it did around a lot of German cities which
have been rebuilt after the Second World War. They actually did
it. They planted those forests first and then they did the development.
So, we are quite serious about all that.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
8 Note by the witness: The total expenditure
is about £1.5 million, over three years. Back
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