House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER COMMITTEE

(URBAN AFFAIRS SUB-COMMITTEE)

 

 

THE ROLE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF CABE

 

 

Monday 13 December 2004

MR P FINCH OBE Hon FRIBA and MR R SIMMONS

RT HON LORD McINTOSH OF HARINGEY, RT HON KEITH HILL MP and

MR ALISTAIR DONALD

Evidence heard in Public Questions 166-274

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Committee

(Urban Affairs Sub- Committee)

on Monday 13 December 2004

Members present

Mr Clive Betts, in the Chair

Andrew Bennett

Sir Paul Beresford

Mr John Cummings

Chris Mole

Christine Russell

 

In the absence of the Chairman, Andrew Bennett was called to the Chair

________________

Memoranda submitted by Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Paul Finch OBE Hon FRIBA, Acting Chairman and Mr Richard Simmons, Chief Executive, of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), examined.

Q166 Andrew Bennett: First of all, may I welcome everyone to the second session of the sub-committee's inquiry into the effectiveness and role of CABE. May I apologise for Clive Betts who should be in the Chair, but I understand he is stuck in a motorway traffic jam somewhere. As soon as he arrives, I hope he will take over the Chair from me. May I welcome the two of you to this first session this afternoon and ask you to identify yourselves for the record.

Mr Finch: Paul Finch, acting chair of CABE until tomorrow.

Mr Simmons: Richard Simmons, chief executive of CABE for about three months.

Q167 Andrew Bennett: Do you want to say anything by way of introduction, or are you happy for us to go straight to questions?

Mr Finch: Only very briefly to say that CABE's activities include many programmes not simply design review , and I imagine we will be getting a number of questions on that, but other important programmes relating to skills and enabling, which are basically about helping people and publishing advice.

Q168 Christine Russell: Well I hope we are going to make your last afternoon of work very pleasant for you. May I ask you to think of some of the schemes that you have been involved with and tell us which ones you think have been successful and why they have been successful? In general, how do you as an organisation, measure the impact that you have?

Mr Finch: We have looked at significant schemes in regional cities probably more than in London, though many in London, where our advice has been adopted by the architects and the client, sometimes with a bit of pressure from the local planning authority. I think we have had an impact, for example, on some significant shopping centre schemes, for instance in Exeter and in Nottingham, but a number of other major regional cities, where old 1960s shopping centres are up for renewal or revamping; the question of whether they are going to be repeat mega structures or whether they are going to be more sympathetic to their surroundings has been a very important issue. I think we have been able to help there. We have done some good work in other areas such as housing layouts and there are schemes which we see pre-planning, which are confidential, where actually the most extreme example of our effectiveness is where entire proposals have been completely withdrawn and redesigned as a result of our comments. By definition they have been confidential but we would be happy to give two or three examples in confidence to the Committee of where very significant schemes have been fundamentally redesigned as a result of our comments.

Q169 Andrew Bennett: Can you give us one example of the housing where you feel that the design of housing has been significantly improved?

Mr Finch: Yes, there is a scheme at Hither Green in the London Borough of Lewisham where a really very unsatisfactory proposal which did have some heritage connotations was completely re-thought as a result of our comments. We were alerted by a local amenities society which was very concerned about this and we intervened and suggested that the quality of design was simply not up to it. As a result of this, the house builder ran an architectural competition and has produced something which is considerably better. Outside London, we have had a couple of goes at a scheme, Bede Island in Leicester, a tricky site with pylons all over it and various other environmental constraints, where the house builder responded very well to our comments.

Q170 Christine Russell: You were quite frank in October when you published a report saying that, in your opinion, only 20 per cent of the new housing down in the South East was of a sufficiently high standard. How did the other 80 per cent get away?

Mr Finch: Well let me answer that in general terms then I will pass over to Richard, who knows more about that in detail. To get planning permission, a scheme does not have to be a great scheme; it has to be good enough to get through the litmus test of the local planning authority. You might say that by custom and practice we are used to a rather low grade of housing development in the South East. I think that is partly because the architects employed are not good enough and secondly, because the house builders, it is not their fault, can sell everything they build twice over, there is no real market pressure to produce schemes which are going to sell themselves on design quality.

Mr Simmons: Yes. I think I should clarify that when you say it was our opinion, actually it was independent consultants, whom we employed, using something called the building-for-life standard; again, we can leave copies of this or send them to the Committee. This is a standard we agreed with the House Builders' Federation and the Civic Trust. It is a relatively objective way of measuring the quality of both the homes and also the public spaces around them. What we found was that about 61 per cent of schemes were average in that respect and about 20 per cent were poorly laid out, poorly designed. A lot of the issues were around how the car was handled, for example, and whether or not you could actually walk to the shops from a particular scheme and in addition the advice was that it was rather bland and boring architecture.

Q171 Christine Russell: So, who do you really blame for that? Do you blame lack of design experts within local planning authorities? Do you blame the volume of house builders?

Mr Simmons: I think it is a combination. We actually said at the time when we launched the report, which is the Housing Order here, that we felt that there was a problem with the house building industry in the sense that they have a particular style and design of scheme which they know will get planning permission and they tend to use that universally, whether it is appropriate to the neighbourhood that they are building in or not.

Q172 Christine Russell: And are the big volume house builders more at fault than perhaps the smaller local firms?

Mr Simmons: We looked at the top ten house builders and nearly all of them had actually built very excellent schemes and also poor schemes and also mediocre schemes. So in fact they are all capable of building the best, but they choose not to.

Q173 Christine Russell: Where they can get away with a poor design they do.

Mr Simmons: We think also that the problem lies with the local planning authorities. We did a survey recently which said that only 26 per cent of local planning authorities refused a scheme more than 20 times on design grounds, in 2003 for example. Why was that? They said it was partly because they did not feel they had the skills, partly because they did not think they would necessarily get support if the schemes went to appeal and partly because there is such pressure on them to move schemes through the planning system.

Mr Finch: It is worth saying actually that our intention in life is not to go round just criticising things and walking away, it is to be positive and to work with people, as we are working with the volume house builders, to improve standards and their co-operation is very welcome. Occasionally, we have helped a local planning authority, Manchester for example, where they did go to appeal, where a volume house builder was trying to dumb down a scheme which had permission and was trying in effect to make it worse and get away with building it. We were able to help the local planning authority at appeal, which was successful in preventing them doing that. So there is a mixture of stick and carrot from our point of view.

Q174 Sir Paul Beresford: When you get the minutes from Gurney's, I wonder whether you would read them carefully because the statement you have made does sound beautifully arrogant, as though you are the be-all and end-all of architecture. I always understood that a fair element of architecture was subjective. Do you feel that some of the local authorities feel obliged to take your suggestion and some of the developers as well, because they know it will be very much easier to get it through planning than if they took another architect who may have a different opinion on a subjective area?

Mr Finch: That is a complicated question, but the first answer I would give is that I do not think local planning authorities feel obliged to take our advice. Sometimes they do and something they do not; ditto architects and their clients. We are not a statutory consultee and we try to give opinions as best we can. By and large, in nearly 80 per cent of cases, people make some alteration to their scheme where we have suggested that is necessary, but generally that is to do either with fine tuning or occasionally with a fundamental re-think. On the whole, the people who have used our services, the local planning authorities and the architects and the clients, as you will have heard in your earlier Committee hearing, have found it useful. The other thing is that in terms of numbers, we see about one per cent of significant planning applications, significant as defined by ODPM, larger schemes in their context. Therefore what we can do hopefully is just to give some pointers as to how certain schemes could be done well, in the full knowledge that the vast majority are not going to come our way.

Q175 Christine Russell: Well the question I was going to ask you before Sir Paul came in was - and you have just given the figure - was how many planning application you actually saw and you said one per cent. How do you answer your critics who say that actually you are only interested in the icon buildings and you do not have the same interest in the applications for the run-of-the-mill housing estates?

Mr Finch: In broad terms, that is simply not true. I think if you look at an analysis of all the building types and all the schemes that we have looked at, there are large numbers of what you might call ordinary developments and housing is a particular interest of ours, because of course, that is where everybody lives and there is a lot of that sort of development in the pipeline. We also look at schools and health centres and hospitals, the everyday buildings of people's lives, railway stations.

Q176 Christine Russell: Do you have to prioritise? Are you under so much pressure to look at applications that you have to prioritise?

Mr Finch: We have some priorities set by ODPM which relate to a target, for example, the number of schemes that we look at from various locations around the country. If we were doing it on size alone, then I think London would be hopelessly unbalanced and we are expected to run the broad gamut of building types, particularly ones which affect large numbers of people.

Mr Simmons: Although a large part of the business and a growing part of the business, the design review programme is looking at the moment at schemes both in the growth areas and outside them, where there are large new ground-fill developments. At the last design review committee (DRC) we attended, for example, there was a large scheme from the South West which was a quarry site which was about to be developed for housing, a very large housing estate. We were looking not at issues of architectural style at all, but whether or not the site was going to be accessible, how it related to the local community. In this particular scheme, which again is confidential at this stage because they have not put in planning applications yet, they have not connected up the existing community with the rest of the scheme. Those are the kinds of issues that we tend to address through design review.

Mr Finch: I might say, just as a more complete answer to your question about whether architecture is not about opinions on style, that in what we try to do, and it is in our design review document, the basis on which we try to assess schemes, the question of personal likes and dislikes very rarely feature frankly. What one is looking for is whether the building relates well to its context, whether the planning analysis has been done, whether the site analysis bears any relationship to what is then being proposed, a whole series of things. You cannot say they are absolutely objective tests because it requires some knowledge and judgment to see whether they have been met, but it is not a question, as I would put it, of measuring the diameter of the dots on the architect's bow tie. That is absolutely not our interest and we are not style police.

Q177 Andrew Bennett: Poor design. Is it because it is cheaper to do it that way?

Mr Finch: Not necessarily, no, on the contrary. If one thinks about what architects and urban designers do and also good proactive, creative planners, what they are applying is some sort of design and planning brain power to the task in hand. That is neither necessarily more expensive, nor is the result necessarily more expensive. That is to do with budgets and organisation and design intelligence.

Q178 Andrew Bennett: Right. How far can the regulations, particularly the highway engineers, be blamed for some of the poor design?

Mr Finch: Richard will chip in here on the programmes that we have undertaken to try and help out in this area. I think what has happened is that you might say that at certain points in the 20^th century the split between ideas of transport engineering and architecture and town planning actually, in retrospect we can see, were pretty disastrous. You ended up with sort of silo professionals with their own rules and their own culture and it was almost "Never the twain shall meet". This is a point we are trying to address.

Mr Simmons: We undertook a survey recently of highways engineers and we actually had 1,000 replies roughly and 85 per cent had not received any urban design training during their career. It is an issue which they feel very strongly about and we do too. In fact, we run a programme and by the end of this year we will have had 1,000 engineers through this programme which is a training programme to try to bring some urban design intelligence to designing our streets. We are running this jointly with English Heritage (EH), who, as you may know, have been campaigning on this subject as well. What we are trying to do together is make sure that the design expertise matches the technical expertise that engineers have.

Q179 Andrew Bennett: But is it the engineers' personal views, or is it the regulations that they are now having to work to which they may have built up over the years?

Mr Simmons: I think most engineers would agree that it is a bit of both actually. There is, as you rightly point out, a regulatory culture in highways design and when you look at the best design guides, they are trying to break away from those issues at the moment. The government has committed itself to producing a new manual for streets to replace the various design bulletins which will provide more flexibility.

Q180 Andrew Bennett: It is coming along rather slowly, is it not?

Mr Simmons: We are hoping to become involved in helping them to speed it up shortly. If you go to Kensington High Street and see the work they have done there, removing the barriers and so on, achieving a reduction in accidents which is counter-intuitive, then you can see how, if the balance between the pedestrian, the car and the cyclist is changed, places can become safer.

Q181 Mr Cummings: Evidence to the Committee suggests that CABE really could have been more successful in improving the design of the construction programmes led by government departments, specifically mentioning health and education. Is it a problem and what is the problem in liaising with these departments?

Mr Finch: I think there are several problems. One is the capacity of the construction industry and its professionals to cope with what will be the most significant post-war building programme. There is a wave of health and educational building going on at the moment and it is going to become more significant. One of our tasks has been to try and gear up in terms of making preparations to give additional skills to professionals, to enable them to cope with this. I do not doubt that there have been buildings in the first wave of PFI health and education buildings which could have been better. This is a new process and we of course acknowledge that without that process, they would not be being built at the moment, so one has to make a balance there. We have tried very hard to look at potential exemplar projects through various schools programmes, schools for the future and through our enabling programme with education authorities up and down the country.

Mr Simmons: We are working with the Department for Educational Skills and with the National Health Service and Department of Health at the moment to try to improve and inject some design quality into the schemes that are being built. I think there are some successes coming forward: the Kings Mill Hospital at Sherwood Forest for example. When the design for that becomes public, we expect that you will be able to see the input that CABE has made there. I think the DfES have done an enormous amount of work as well through Partnerships for Schools to try to provide exemplar good designs for school developments.

Q182 Mr Cummings: When you talk about schools are your referring to universities from where these engineers are graduating?

Mr Simmons: No, I am talking about the building of schools for the future programme in which the DFES is currently trying to build new secondary schools.

Q183 Mr Cummings: Are you saying that designers and architects are leaving universities with degrees which do not really equip them for the job that you foresee them doing?

Mr Simmons: I think I am talking at cross purposes. I am talking about the design of new schools at the moment.

Q184 Mr Cummings: I am speaking generally. You have mentioned the amount of time and effort that you yourselves are spending ensuring that designs are compatible with what is required today. Are we saying a vacuum exists within the normal training establishments?

Mr Finch: There is a vacuum, particularly in relation to urban regeneration projects, brownfield sites. This was first identified in Lord Rogers' report on the urban renaissance and what he predicted is, five years on, in fact true, which is that the number of skilled professional who are not only architects or planners or engineers, but who have very specific skills in relation to how to make these things come together and work in some of the areas of the country which most need the investment and the development, is more than one set of professional skills.

Q185 Mr Cummings: What I am getting at is whether the universities are churning out design engineers with the quality of education that you are requiring to tackle these problems.

Mr Finch: I would say that the first phase of the education is fine, but it is not enough to have degrees in those things; a lot more professional training is required.

Q186 Mr Cummings: Are any of the universities taking this on board?

Mr Finch: Yes they are, because a lot of them are now doing post-graduate studies, some of the planning skills for example, are doing year-long courses, or indeed short courses, to try to put people through training which is in addition to the professional skills they already have. But this is a big task, because there is a very big regeneration programme going on. It is tens of billions of pounds and that will require more and better trained professionals.

Mr Simmons: It is also true to say that the age profile of some of the professions, particularly my own, town planning, is starting to move in the direction of people like me. The number of older men involved is quite large and within the next ten years, we expect to see quite a few of those starting to retire and the universities are not churning out large numbers of new planners and civil engineers at the moment. Architect courses are holding up, but in fact people are not coming forward to volunteer to become planners and engineers in the numbers that we will need over the next 10 to 15 years.

Q187 Sir Paul Beresford: Even so, you would agree that a large proportion of the design is done by competent people. How often do you look at a design that has come across your desk and said "Great" and sent it back?

Mr Finch: Actually, I would say sometimes rather than all the time. Even if you have competent designers, it does not necessarily mean that the client's brief has been a great one, or that the local circumstances, the planning archaeology if you will, makes it an easy task to produce a good building on a particular site. One of the things that we have been able to do on occasion is to say to some very, very good architects, if not great architects, that there might be things which could be improved in their designs. Contrary to what one might expect, sometimes they are very happy to get this advice because it may have been what they have been saying to the client or the local planning authority all along and to have a bit of backup from somebody who has not got an axe to grind can be useful. We try not to second-guess what the circumstances are which have produced a particular proposal.

Q188 Sir Paul Beresford: So they all send you a Christmas card.

Mr Finch: Some of them do, but never, never, never anything else.

Q189 Mr Cummings: How could other government departments work more closely with CABE in raising design standards within their own development programmes?

Mr Finch: One word from me, but this is Richard's territory. The fact is that we have had huge co-operation right across the spending departments who have sought our advice and given us support, including, I may say, ODPM. We started life merely as a creature of DCMS, but the work that we have done with and for ODPM is one example which is spreading across.

Q190 Mr Cummings: Which government departments are not signed up to a design agenda?

Mr Simmons: It is hard to think of one now. There were some issues and concerns about the Department of Health recently but we now seem to have moved on very well with them and they are looking through their future plans for what will replace NHS estates, to build the good practice from NHS estates on design into the Department of Health. It is worth saying that CABE's approach has been to start with the people who have the money, the Treasury and Office of Government Commerce and the Office of Government Commerce has been very supportive of CABE's work because of the fact that what we are proposing is looking at the whole-life cost and value of buildings and saying that good design contributes to that. In October the OGC issued new guidance for PFI and other projects, looking specifically at design as part of the gateway review process, as they call it, which is a process by which you look at projects during various stages. That has been an encouragement to all government departments to work closely and we have helped the OGC to produce those documents.

Mr Finch: It is worth mentioning some of the departments we specifically work with. We have done a whole number of things on MoD major projects with special design reviews on some of the really big barracks programmes - they are not called barracks any more but residential programmes. We have worked with the Home Office on their new HQ in Marsham Street; the Department of Health has already been mentioned; FCO on embassy design and the Lord Chancellor's Department specifically on the court programme which was quite an extensive one. So we have had a lot of support from these departments and I hope our advice is useful. We are still getting requests, so I assume it is.

Q191 Sir Paul Beresford: That could of course be taken as a criticism of the confidence of the departments and public service approach to design in any event, or a compliment to you in that they know they will have a much easier run getting it through planning if they have your label on it.

Mr Simmons: One of the things CABE does a lot to help with is how to be a good client, and we have produced quite a lot of guidance on that and one of the problems you face as a public servant is, say you work for a health trust, that you may be asked once in your life to be the client for a multi-million pound project. To be able to come to an organisation like CABE, which has expertise and knowledge, to help you to select the right design team, to put an enabler in, as they are called in the jargon, to help you to manage that project is something they value. The potential to make huge mistakes on very big projects is always there and the value of having somebody to support you through that process is something which reduces the risks to government.

Mr Finch: Specifically, there are fewer architects, certainly in the top echelons of the civil service, than there were perhaps 30 years ago, when you would routinely have a chief architect for the health department and actually for most departments and they, for whatever reason, no longer exist. There is a sense in which we are seen as an adviser or a shoulder to lean on, by departments which do not have the internal expertise in quite the way they used to.

Q192 Christine Russell: I was going to ask you about the MoD, but you mentioned the MoD. However, many of the buildings that were formerly owned by the MoD, rather grand listed buildings in many cases, have been passed to the Crown Estate. What sort of relationship and influence do you have with the Crown Estate, because a number of those buildings are now giving serious cause for concern?

Mr Finch: We see schemes that the Crown Estate promotes occasionally in the general run of things and we have the occasional discussion with their chief executive, for example. I do not think we have a specific programme of helping the Crown Estate as such; it is on an as-and-when basis.

Christine Russell: Perhaps you could make them aware of your existence.

Q193 Mr Cummings: One of the problems seems to be the design quality of PFI projects. How do you believe you can persuade the procurers and providers to give greater weight to design issues?

Mr Finch: I must say this has been a long, fight is the wrong word, it has been a long campaign on our part to try to do whatever we can to promote design quality within the PFI process. Now the help we have had on this has largely come from OGC, because they produce more than one document which has stressed lifetime value as opposed to initial cost and in fact the government's better public buildings policy endorsed by the prime minister back in 2000 has some specific recommendations and advice about design quality whatever the form of procurement might be. It is really acknowledged by the whole profession, I think everybody including PFI suppliers, that there are aspects of PFI procedures which can militate against design quality. We have identified what many, if not all of those are and the discussions go on, in order to try to get the best outcomes. Fortunately, we are now at a point where buildings are starting to come through as built, where we can point to ones where we think that the PFI process has worked well, for example, Brighton Library. Having the examples of certain MoD buildings where you can say to people, if they want to know how to do it well, then follow the way these people did it and not the way that perhaps some other people have done on projects which have been less successful.

Q194 Chris Mole: Apart from the fact that there are clearly more planning applications than CABE can possibly comment on and you talked a little about the targets that the department give you, geographical, building types etcetera, but bearing in mind the importance of your advice standing up to scrutiny after the event, would it not be better if you looked at slightly fewer schemes perhaps more thoroughly than offer what could be considered a superficial view on some more?

Mr Finch: Let me kick off on that one because we can leave a sort of flow chart showing how we decide which schemes to assess.

Q195 Chris Mole: Is this published.

Mr Finch: Yes, it is but I am not sure that it is in this form. It is written down and we tried to produce something which is not that simple. In a nutshell, there are four streams. There are schemes of low significance which are probably not appropriate for us to comment on which are being referred to us in a routine way. There are schemes of medium significance which are discussed by staff and a commissioner; we look at a number of those every week. There are slightly more complex schemes, of medium to high significance, which involve a site visit by a member of staff and possibly a commissioner and the drawings are looked; it is known as a pin-up, where the drawings are pinned up and they are discussed by staff, the commissioner and two or three members of the design review committee, and then the highly significant schemes, which I think is where we are getting to what you are interested in, are where we do up to 100 a year where there are all the other things which I have already mentioned, but there is a full-blown presentation by client and architect usually with the local planning authority present, plus English Heritage and any other relevant authority, like the GLA if it is a significant scheme in London. So there are 100 key schemes that we look at in a lot of detail each year and then 400 or 500 others in lesser detail; that is how we try to cut and dice it.

Mr Simmons: One of the things that CABE differentiates from the Royal Fine Arts Commission, because design review is something that we succeeded them in doing, is the fact that we publish learning, we produce documents called design reviews and this is one which looks generally at what schemes we have looked at. We also produce specialist ones on shopping centres and so on. I would say the number of schemes is about right at the moment to enable us to have enough of a sample to do this and this is used in feedback to the industry. In my last job before I became chief executive of CABE, I used the one on shopping centres with a developer who was having some difficulty developing a scheme we were working on together to assist in looking at some of the key features they could incorporate in the scheme. I think the number of schemes we are currently looking at is probably about right; too few we would not be able to get the learning to put into this kind of document and redistribute it back to the industry.

Q196 Chris Mole: Just back on your flow chart and the criterion there to help you decide which is going to go, is that published, as AHL were suggesting might be a good idea?

Mr Simmons: Yes, it is on our website.

Q197 Chris Mole: In our first evidence session, we heard some criticism of these informal sessions where you said it was staff and a commissioner. Do you think that when local authorities and developers are hearing this view they should understand what weight should be given to those in comparison to what weight should be given to the ones that go through the fuller process?

Mr Simmons: Yes. I think the point was well made that although we publish the names of our design review panel members generally, we do not at the moment and have not in the past actually put onto each report the names of the people involved in the review and that is something which we will do in future.

Q198 Chris Mole: So you would say the status is the same between the two?

Mr Finch: I think the advice is, that if it is moderately significant scheme, then we would expect the comment to be read and understood without very much discussion by the architect and it is generally speaking copied to the client and the planning authority. Where the schemes become more complex, then usually the architect in the first instance will talk to whoever it is on the CABE staff who is the case officer to seek further clarification or sometimes bordering on design advice. They might have meetings to go over what has been said and why and what strategic approaches we might recommend. As the schemes become more complex and the advice becomes more detailed, then it is not infrequent that there might be two or three meetings between CABE staff and the applicants, partly to prepare them for when they come before the design review panel as we are now calling it, rather than the committee, because it is a large group of people from whom we select each time. So there is quite an iterative process and there is a lot of discussion. We feel that the more significant and the more complex the scheme, the more you would expect, where advice is needed, and sometimes it might be one tiny thing or nothing at all, there to be more meetings.

Q199 Chris Mole: So you are not worried that people might take the sort of pin-up reviews and say, well that has got CABE approval and it is the same as if it had been through a full DRC.

Mr Finch: I think the only slight dilemma, it is the way of things, is that if somebody gets a letter which perhaps makes four points and three of them are negative and one of them is positive, they are inclined to quote the positive one. Now of course, it is rather difficult to control that, but if it comes to our attention that it has happened, then we would just write to them and say, you should not be doing this. Fortunately, because everything gets copied to the local planning authority, they and the councillors will see it before any planning decision is made; that is a public process. Our work is done by then. The information is on the public record, so somebody might try to pull the wool about what it is we have said, but they stand to be found out, because our comments are public.

Q200 Chris Mole: You touched just now on who sits on particular design review panels. How do you draw down from your resource to work out who is going to do what?

Mr Finch: At about this time of year, in November, the staff draws up a rota and we have about 30 members on the panel at the moment. They look for a balance of architects and others, landscape architects, engineers, occasionally an artist, and they will try to allocate them spots through the coming 12 months, so you know. Everyone now has their dates for next year and there might be a little bit of swapping in between times, but the intention is to keep that balance.

Q201 Chris Mole: Does that mean that if you have something coming up with perhaps historic buildings in it or in a conservation area you can guarantee that you are going to get somebody on the panel with some expertise in that area?

Mr Simmons: We actually work very closely with English Heritage. About 65 per cent of our schemes involve English Heritage and they are invited to attend design review for all those schemes. Last year they attended about 45 per cent of them in the end, but they are always asked for advice and being the government's agency for looking at new development, we would tend to rely on English Heritage's advice on historic environments and we will ask them for their views. We do have some of our own people and in fact some of our design review people are architectural historians, for example, but English Heritage are engaged by the government and paid by them to do that work and we ask them to be involved and they frequently are.

Mr Finch: It is worth saying that the chair of the design review panel, Les Sparks, is also an English Heritage commissioner and we have had on our panel architects who coincidentally have also been involved with English Heritage, perhaps on their London advisory committee. The final thing on that is that of course it is unusual these days for an architect with any body of work not to be involved with a project which involves the historic environment and often it is not English Heritage, because it just happens very, very frequently.

Q202 Chris Mole: So you reject the view that people are assigned on a random basis to the panel?

Mr Finch: It is not random in the sense that it is a considered group for each meeting. If a particular project came up where there was a particular historic aspect, where there was either a commissioner, who are entitled to attend all meetings anyway, or a design review ---

Q203 Andrew Bennett: How many do in practice?

Mr Finch: In practice I would say that you would usually have two or three commissioners in addition to whoever was on the panel on that day. You would have the chair of the panel for a start and then there are four or five other commissioners who are vice chairs who might look in for half a day or a whole day, or somebody might come in because it is a project that they find interesting, for example if it is for a very, very tall building and it is a very famous architect presenting, then you might get one or two more commissioners turning up than usual.

Q204 Chris Mole: You described a process where some of those considerations by the panels can go over a period of time. Is it always the same people who turn up to those meetings?

Mr Simmons: No it is not and we have thought long and hard about where a project that we reviewed might come back, whether we should try to reassemble the committee which saw it first time round. Our conclusion about that is that actually the game is not worth the candle. By and large, unless a scheme has a very rough review, so that it is substantially changed, assuming it is substantially changed, if that happens, then it is perfectly appropriate for a fresh committee to look at it. I will give an example. Paddington Station was a long-running project where the scheme changed very substantially over the course of about 18 months and by the time the final planning application scheme came to us, it was a completely different committee that looked at it. That was fine because really it was a completely different proposal. What we try to do, without going into too much detail, is where there are fairly minor changes or recommendations, then we deal with that, either as a pin-up or just a routine meeting. Where there are really significant changes, then it seems to us perfectly reasonable that a new set of people might look at it.

Q205 Chris Mole: May I just ask you to respond to this? The Chairman put a question to our witness at our first session about consistency in terms of different views, different styles of architecture and who is actually on the panel and the witness said "Certainly we have noticed that, over the history of particular schemes, where, quite rightly, CABE has been invited to come back on several occasions over a period of two years, the same people were not on the review panel for successive meetings. Clearly that is a problem". You do not see that as a problem.

Mr Finch: I do not see it as a huge problem, firstly because the fundamental view about the scheme, which is to say whether we are supporting the principles of that building being in that place at all, is binding on subsequent meetings. So we do not put architects and clients in a position of getting a yes, yes, yes, but we suggest one or two tweaks and then they tweak and the next time it comes back, someone else says no, no, no. It does not happen and our internal rules actually make that impossible.

Mr Simmons: It is also worth saying that the officers will be the same people. We have a fairly small team managing design review, their job is to advise the design review panel and they will aim to ensure consistency of decision-making; they also draft on behalf of the Committee the letter which is sent out.

Q206 Andrew Bennett: That is a bit dangerous to suggest that all the other people are irrelevant.

Mr Simmons: No, no; what I mean is that they will actually remind the Committee of what has been said previously, should they have neglected to think of that when they are giving their answer. They are there to advise and support in the same way that local authority officers will advise a planning committee.

Q207 Chris Mole: In November, CABE published two short papers on its approach to the historic environment and environmental sustainability. Why were they necessary at that time?

Mr Simmons: I guess partly because I am new in the job and I think it is about time CABE started saying a bit more about its policies towards things, partly, clearly, because we have received a certain amount of criticism on some of those issues in the media, stimulated by some of the people who appeared before this Committee amongst others. We wanted to be clear about our position, which is that we do consider the historic environment as part of our consideration of schemes. We do think it is an important part of the context for schemes. We do think sometimes people will want to design something new which may change the historic environment. In fact, if you look back at the records, as I have done since I have arrived, of design review, you will find quite a lot of occasions, a scheme in Norwich, the one that was actually put in front of you I think in our evidence, where the historic environment has been defended and supported by CABE, a very well-known scheme in Coppergate. It did seem worthwhile to me that we should actually make some statements on those subjects. As far as sustainability is concerned, it is an issue which is extremely important for design, but since arriving at CABE I have met people from outside the organisation who have said, CABE do design, other people do sustainability. I do not see a distinction myself. I think good design is also sustainable design, or should be.

Q208 Chris Mole: Convince us then that you have not just produced these reports in order to head off critical evidence from the Environment Agency to this Committee. Tell us how you are going to follow up on the environmental sustainability policies.

Mr Finch: We have commissioners and design review panel members with professional expertise in this area, so is the question of sustainability, which, as you know, is not a simple one to define, more that the building regulations? Clearly anything which is built has to be legal and it is a matter for this place to determine whether the regulations are of sufficient quantity or quality. From the point of view of sustainable design, it is a routine part of our analysis to look at a project, whether it is oriented in a sensible way, whether it uses potential energy sources sensibly, whether it looks wasteful, whether it looks uneconomic, whether it has to be air conditioned, are issues which routinely arise. Now on the larger questions, let me give one example. It is frequently asked how a tall office building could be sustainable. One answer to that is that it does not generally include any parking, certainly not if it is in central London and everybody has to get to it via public transport. If you look at energy use over 25 years, perhaps what on the face of it might look a greener building in the suburbs, to which everybody has to drive to get to, might be considerably less sustainable. These are all big policy issues, but generally speaking we think that concentration of development and intensification and regeneration of brownfield sites, on best practice design principles, is the way to go forward. Just one other comment on heritage, if I may? If the same question had been phrased about why we are producing things on that, we have worked with English Heritage from the start of CABE. We produced two publications with them which I think are worth drawing to the Committee's attention: one Buildings in Context, which is about how you put new architecture into historic settings and another Shifting Sands which is the regeneration of seaside towns. We were very delighted about the constructive evidence that EH gave this Committee about our joint working together.

Mr Simmons: The straight answer to your question about how I can convince you is that we certainly have not seen any evidence from the Environment Agency when that paper on sustainability was drafted.

Q209 Sir Paul Beresford: If you have responded to some of the criticisms - we have mentioned one here - are there other areas you are going to respond to that you could tell the Committee?

Mr Finch: Which sort of areas?

Q210 Sir Paul Beresford: You mentioned criticism about your response to historic buildings.

Mr Finch: Yes, we did get criticisms and we think we have robust answers to them.

Q211 Christine Russell: May I just stick for a minute with the historic environment, because you have just been really trying to convince us that you do care passionately about it. Yet what a lot of your critics point to, not just your critics in the media, but critics from amenities societies and conservation groups is that in your corporate strategy, there is really little recognition of the re-use and refurbishment of historic places and buildings. How do you explain that omission?

Mr Simmons: Because we are charged by government with looking principally at new development, new architecture and new urban design. English Heritage is charged by government with looking at those issues. As we said, we work closely with them, but we have limited resources, as do English Heritage, and we think it probably best if we stick to the knitting.

Q212 Christine Russell: So you do not get involved in an issue of whether or not to demolish and put up a new building or whether to try to find a re-use and a refurbishment of an existing building. Does a developer or a local authority never come to you to seek advice? Do they always go to English Heritage? You mentioned Norwich.

Mr Simmons: We will tend to be involved in projects in two ways. One is through the enabling process, in which case we might have somebody working in the field with the local authority where those issues might be debated. Then the question of which should be done would be discussed, but the decision always rests with the local community. In the design review process, what we tend to see is schemes that are some way down the design process, where English Heritage will probably already have been engaged in discussions about the future of the building.

Q213 Christine Russell: Do you never clash? Has there never been an occasion where English Heritage have said "Keep this building" and you have said "No it's not worth it. Here is an attractive new build scheme to put in its place".

Mr Finch: It usually happens slightly differently, which is that the new proposal might involve the demolition of an existing building, for example, the Heron Tower scheme in the City of London where we appeared on either side of a public inquiry and there simply was not a meeting of minds. I would have to say, I think that is the exception rather than the rule. We produced guidance with English Heritage on tall buildings and in that guidance, we actually acknowledged, which we thought was the only grown-up way to deal with it, that there would be occasions when we would take a different view of things. English Heritage has a statutory duty to protect the past and our duty is to advise in the round on a proposal. Now sometimes in the round, you might say on balance you think the benefits of the new building outweigh the merits of keeping the existing one and EH might said they disagree and that is the way it goes.

Q214 Chris Mole: We were touching just now on the way in which people look at the advice you give and I think you made it clear that you intend to publish the names of people who are party to the considerations in the future and that is to be welcomed. Will you also be saying something about how they reach their conclusions?

Mr Simmons: We publish a letter which effectively reflects the discussion that took place at the meeting. What we do not do is produce long sets of minutes of those meetings because we think it is more efficient to tell people what the conclusions of the meeting were. At the moment that feels to me to be about right.

Q215 Chris Mole: What more do you think CABE should be doing to listen to local interest so that CABE understands better the local factors which might not be obvious from looking at a set of drawings on a plan?

Mr Finch: Occasionally, we have responded to requests from local amenity societies, as we always would do, to look at a proposal which is concerning them. What we do not do routinely is try to consult with every relevant party that is involved with a local planning application because we are a consultee as well. It is the local planning authority which owes the duty of care to all the relevant consultees on its patch. We are being asked for our view about something. Now clearly, if we know that there are strongly held views, then of course we would note them, but just because they are strongly held by one group, does not mean that we are obliged to change our minds about whether the scheme has merits or not. If I can give one example, in York for the inquiry into the Coppergate centre, we felt that the quality of architecture being proposed for a new shopping centre simply was not sufficient for a world-class historic city and we said so. On that occasion, we were in tune with a number of local amenity societies and protestors about the scheme which was actually promoted and backed by the local authority itself; but there have been other occasions when actually we have been in tune with the advice of the local planners and the local planning committee and therefore in contradistinction to an amenity society. So we try to say what we have to say because that is how we think we can be useful to the planning authority.

Q216 Chris Mole: One of the grumbles we have heard is that people feel that some of the designs are being heavily shaped by informal advice at the pre-planning stage and that is not published at all, despite its potentially strong influence on the local authority. What do you feel you can say about those concerns?

Mr Finch: Well let me give an anonymous example. A client and an architect come to CABE with a very bad scheme, pre-planning. We have a confidential meeting and we tell them in no uncertain terms, we write to them, that this scheme is very bad in our view for a variety of reasons. Now that does not mean necessarily that it is so bad that it is not going to get planning permission. In our view the more significant the proposal, the better the quality should be, especially tall buildings. If our pre-planning discussions and observations are made public, I believe they will simply come to a halt and it is not our intention to rub somebody's nose in the fact that they have changed their design substantially as a result of our observations. It is three cheers as far as we are concerned, and we have no intention of humiliating people by saying that the scheme was rubbish before we saw it and now it is wonderful. This would be an appalling way to behave.

Q217 Mr Cummings: The AHL inquiry, and its subsequent report last June have sought to resolve problems of conflicts of interests. It suggested, and I quote "It is essential that CABE is able to demonstrate publicly the openness and integrity of the design review process". How could we tell that CABE has really changed its spots?

Mr Simmons: May I just comment first of all on whether or not there were conflicts of interests? What the AHL audit did not say is that there had been conflicts of interests in CABE. It said there was the potential for the perception of conflicts of interests because of the way that the board of CABE was made up. The board of CABE is of course selected by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and not by CABE itself. The audit also said that, at the time when CABE was established, this is paragraph 14.4 of the audit, there was a strong feeling that its commissioner should include a number of experts active within areas of CABE core activities and then went on to talk about the fact that that did create for us the potential for perceptions of conflicts of interests.

Q218 Mr Cummings: Are you saying that CABE has not changed?

Mr Simmons: No, I am sorry, I am being long winded perhaps. What I am getting on to saying is that no wrong doing was identified in CABE.

Q219 Mr Cummings: I did not suggest there was. What I said was "... to resolve problems of conflict of interests".

Mr Simmons: It was the use of the term "changed our spots". It suggested that there was something wrong with our spots in the first place perhaps.

Q220 Mr Cummings: I was not suggesting that, the AHL inquiry was.

Mr Simmons: The AHL inquiry said that our commissioners are educated and trained to understand the seven principles of public life and that we had taken reasonable steps to ensure it is operating in accordance with those principles. That is paragraph 8.3 of the report. If you are asking whether we have responded to the recommendations in the report, then the answer is yes, we are responding to all those recommendations that apply to us. Some of them of course will apply to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport rather than us. We think they will improve our standards. I certainly believe, having come in as accounting officer, that the commissioners have behaved in a way which I would expect for example of local authority members, who are also bound by similar rules to CABE. Their interests have been declared, interests continue to be declared and people do not take part in design review activities, for example, or enabling, if they have declared an interest in the scheme. The alternative, which I think was suggested by one of the witnesses last time, that we should not have people active in the industry, because of the potential for perceptions of conflict of interests, seems to me to be one which would actually weaken our ability to influence schemes.

Q221 Mr Cummings: A question to Mr Finch. I believe you said in response to the AHL report that CABE just needed fine tuning. The AHL report made 28 recommendations; some were indeed more far reaching than the others. Do you now accept that perhaps a greater overhaul of the procedures is required to restore public confidence in CABE?

Mr Finch: I think several of the 28 recommendations, some for the Department for Culture, but most of them for us, were already in place or on their way before the AHL audit and a number of specific ones have already been addressed. I give one example. Up until this year we had always recruited members of the design review panel on recommendations and knowledge that there were people who knew their stuff and were articulate and were likely to be able to be fair in their judgments. We have accepted that actually perhaps that was not perceived as being as open as it should be and we now advertise and we had 100 applicants for the few positions which were available this year and we have appointed a very satisfactory group. We will continue to do all those smallish recommendations; I would not describe them as major but in aggregate there are a lot of them and we are working our way through them and we do not have problem about that.

Q222 Mr Cummings: How far are you away from working on updating your guidance note on managing future conflicts of interests, as suggested in the AHL report?

Mr Finch: I think that is done actually. I think it was in process before the audit concluded, but it is a more substantial document than it was at the start of our life.

Q223 Andrew Bennett: We are running out of time. I have ministers to come next and we have a time slot for them, so can I just press you on one or two final issues. It is all right people putting down their interests in a register that they have got at the moment, but how do you deal with the issue of future interests?

Mr Finch: Since one does not know what the future interest might be, it is not an easy task. One has to approach that by having very clear-cut principles of recording an interest, not when it becomes an interest but at the time when you could reasonably think that there might be the potential. If I can give an example, I think the advice is, for instance supposing a commissioner were invited to take on some sort of advisory role with a government department or perhaps a commercial organisation or a significant statutory body, when they were thinking about taking that up, and the rules of engagement are very clear now, they would have to go to talk to our chief executive who can then make an assessment of whether, if they did take it up, that might lead to an increase in possible perceptions of conflict and if that were the case, whether that was significant enough to advise them, either not to do it, or, if they do it, they will have to cease to be a commissioner.

Q224 Andrew Bennett: Basically, the development world is a very small world, is it not?

Mr Finch: No, I do not think it is a small world.

Q225 Andrew Bennett: As far as CABE is concerned, out of 16 commissioners, eight of them are actually connected to Stanhope for instance. It does become very small, does it not?

Mr Finch: I do not think it is a small world. If you ask them to write down every other organisation that they were connected to in the development world, you would have a list as long as your arm. Stanhope have been one of the most active developers and property managers for 25 years in a world financial centre. Because we tend to have good people on CABE, I should be very disappointed if they had not been working for Stanhope; they will also have worked for a whole other series of developers, hopefully at the top end of the design patronage range. The other point about Stanhope is that they made their reputation, which is way Sir Stuart Lipton was invited to become our chairman, precisely because of their reputation and their track record as promoting and encouraging good architecture and design.

Mr Simmons: To give you an idea of how seriously the commissioners take this, one of the commissioners on that list that you mentioned declared that he had supplied two drawings to Stanhope which they then used in a brochure. That was his only connection with the company but he still declared it. I think that gives you some idea of just how seriously they are taking this issue.

Q226 Andrew Bennett: What about the education trust that you set up? I think that makes two education trusts in an area where we are short of skills. Is it logical to have two trusts?

Mr Simmons: Sorry, the other one being?

Q227 Andrew Bennett: The one that was set up by the Royal Fine Arts Commission.

Mr Simmons: The main public role of the RFAC education trust is to organise the Building of the Year awards which are presented by Lord St John at the Savoy each spring. We have specifically set up our foundation to be a highly active and we have partly done that in response to the JACBE recommendations; I cannot remember what the acronym stands for. It is an encouragement to take a broad-brush approach to the education of young people across the built environment, including heritage. We are talking to other bodies at the moment about having one organisation which can deal with that highly important area of education.

Q228 Andrew Bennett: And lastly, returning to housing issues, if you are looking for good design for housing development, does Poundbury come into that category?

Mr Simmons: We have included Poundbury in the Housing Order I mentioned as an example of a scheme where they have managed traffic extremely well and also a scheme where they have used local materials extremely well. Coming back to the point we were making earlier on about what makes a bland and boring housing estate, it is one which does not actually take account of local materials. So we certainly picked up those two issues. Views vary about Poundbury, but we have learned some good things from it.

Andrew Bennett: On that note, may I thank you very much for your evidence. Can we have the next set of witnesses please?

The Chairman took the Chair

Memoranda submitted by Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

and Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Lord McIntosh of Haringey, a Member of the House of Lords, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Media and Heritage), Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Keith Hill, a Member of the House, Minister of State (Housing and Planning), and Mr Alastair Donald, Urban Affairs Policy Adviser, Policy Directorate, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), examined.

Q229 Chairman: Welcome to the two ministers. For the sake of our records would you like to introduce yourselves?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Andrew McIntosh, Minister for Media and Heritage in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Keith Hill: Keith Hill, Minister for Housing and Planning and Alastair Donald, who is a policy adviser in the urban policy directorate of the ODPM.

Q230 Chairman: My apologies for being late for the first session due to a few problems on the M1, for which neither minister is responsible, I am pleased to say. Do you have anything to say by way of introduction, or do you want to go straight into questions?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Straight to questions as far as I am concerned.

Q231 Christine Russell: CABE's reputation as an independent effective detached body has taken a bit of a battering in the last 12 months. How do you think it can restore its reputation?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think it has restored its reputation. I think that there was a battering in the press, certainly it was essential, when criticisms were being made about procedures in CABE, that they should be dealt with independently and publicly. We did both of those things. We appointed an independent body of forensic auditors, independent of us and independent of CABE, to report on the claims that had been made about perceptions of conflict of interests. We published their report, we acted on their report. We have, I believe, a CABE which is unscathed as a result of this and we have a very distinguished new chairman starting work tomorrow.

Q232 Christine Russell: Do you have any real tangible evidence from local authorities, conservation groups, amenity societies, the media, the public at large that the credibility of CABE has been restored?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: There are two kinds of evidence. First of all, I read the written evidence to your Committee and the written evidence from a significant number of local authorities has been favourable. Secondly, CABE itself does, every year, carry out research into the views of CABE by those who are affected by it. The approval ratings of CABE have remained very high.

Q233 Mr Cummings: Evidence presented to this Committee indicates CABE as being a secretive, unaccountable body with its advice carrying considerable weight with local authorities. If this is the case, is it not time that CABE opened up its proceedings to public scrutiny?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think there is a conflict in what is being said to you, if I may say so. I think it would not have the kind of influence it is said to have, I believe rightly, if it were a secretive body. On the other hand, let me give my own recent example, which is that I went to a design review session last week and the proposals in front of that design review session were confidential. They were at a pre-planning stage and they could not have been released. My view at that time was that in the cases which come before the design review committee which are not confidential, those meetings ought to be in public and there is no conceivable reason why they should not be. I was enormously impressed by the way the design review queried a whole range of different factors, because a lot of people were standing around there. You do not sit down in the design review. I thought to myself, that if this were held in, for example, a small auditorium like the Royal Institution or in an anatomy lab in a university, that would be rather a good thing. A lot of students of architecture and planning and people in local government would want to come, would like to come and would benefit from the frank exchanges of views between developers and architects and the members of the review committee. In that sense, there is room for greater transparency, but I do not accept that that means that the existing procedures are secretive.

Q234 Mr Cummings: So will you be moving in that direction?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is what I would recommend to CABE to do.

Q235 Mr Cummings: If CABE refused to do it?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No, I have not suggested it to them.

Q236 Mr Cummings: No; I said "if they refused to do it".

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Let us not go further than we can walk.

Q237 Mr Cummings: When do you intend to write to CABE about that?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I have not thought about it yet, but I will do.

Q238 Mr Cummings: So you have not thought about it.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I have formed a view which I am sharing openly with the Committee. Why not?

Q239 Mr Cummings: Do you believe that CABE should listen to the views of local interests before taking a view on a particular scheme.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I believe that they should, and I believe that they do.

Q240 Mr Cummings: Would you encourage them to do so?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not think I need to because, as I have said, I do not think I need to any more because I think they do.

Q241 Mr Cummings: How do they do this? Are there any agreed procedures?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I believe that they encourage the local people to write in; I believe that a lot of representations are made to CABE by local organisations and as far as I know, the situation is entirely satisfactory.

Q242 Chairman: Would it be of some concern to you to learn that some local groups do not quite feel that and feel that somehow they are not in the loop when it comes to advice from CABE and that some of that advice is given behind the scenes and they never really find out what it amounts to.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Well, that may happen in some cases. If so, it is a pity, because, except in the case that I was referring to last week, which was certainly in commercial confidence and was brought in confidence, I think it is desirable that they should be as transparent as they possibly can.

Keith Hill: Although it is worth pointing out of course, that once an application is formally submitted then the views of CABE are published and can become a material consideration.

Q243 Mr Cummings: In an interview last week, CABE's incoming chairman said he is quite happy with the way CABE's design review system works and does not propose to change it. In the light of much of our evidence, which highlights the lack of transparency and suspicions about potential conflicts of interests, do you share his confidence?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am sure that John Sorrell, when he comes to work with CABE, will examine and learn a lot more about the design review process. I am sure that he will, as I have, observe the process in action. I imagine that he will be as impressed with the quality of the design review process as I have been. As to what views he might form about the way in which it should be conducted, that is a matter for him, which he will no doubt discuss with his fellow commissioners.

Q244 Chris Mole: As ODPM is CABE's major funder, yet it is accountable to DCMS, so you write to cheques and the noble Lord calls the tune, is it not an odd situation?

Keith Hill: I think you slightly understate the contribution in funding terms made by DCMS. ODPM funds at a rate of about £2 for every £1: DCMS contributes and of course there are other government departments who also make contributions, though not on the scale of either of these departments. We are entirely content with the arrangement. DCMS are the sponsor and they are accountable to Parliament and public accountability seems to me entirely fair.

Q245 Chris Mole: So how do you co-ordinate your input into policy setting and supervising CABE?

Keith Hill: There is a lot of practical joint working. Obviously as ministers, we operate in our day-to-day contacts primarily through officials; both DCMS officials and ODPM officials work perfectly happy together. This seems to me really to be a very good example of what we are all constantly exhorted to achieve, which is joined-up government and it does seem to me that DCMS and ODPM fulfil complementary roles. DCMS has its focus on architecture and on young people and on improving public spaces, they are focused on culture. Our culture, our emphasis is obviously on the broader aspects of regeneration and housing development.

Q246 Chris Mole: Are you not worried that there can be some potential conflicts of issue there. How do you ensure concerted coherent management when perhaps your interest in regeneration may clash with some of the conservation perspectives of DCMS?

Keith Hill: In practice it does not pose itself very frequently as an issue. My Rt Hon and noble Friend has referred to the statistics on satisfaction with the work of CABE: 87 per cent of local authorities expressed themselves satisfied with CABE's work. It is interesting that on the basis of analysis over the past three years, 83 per cent of schemes have been modified in the light of CABE's input, which suggests a degree of satisfaction. Only about six of the projects looked at by CABE each year seem to provoke a degree of contention, which is a very low proportion of the work that CABE does. So in practice we do not find that these issues of conflict or contention arise very much.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think it is worth putting on the record that we do consult ODPM on all appointments to the commission and we would not go ahead if there were disagreements; we would act accordingly if there were disagreements. Not that there have been disagreements, so the question has not arisen.

Q247 Sir Paul Beresford: I think you would possibly agree that this is an area which is fairly subjective. Would you suspect that the success that CABE has had is because it is very much easier to take a plan through a committee of a planning authority, from the point of view of the developer as well as the planning committee, if it has a stamp on it that says "CABE was here" so to speak?

Keith Hill: There is absolutely no doubt that in its period of activity CABE has acquired a very high reputation and my experience is that local authorities are keen to get the CABE imprimatur as well. I was very interested when last Thursday I visited, in a rather hectic day, Chester in the company of my honourable Friend the Member for Chester. I then went on to Liverpool and ended up in Sheffield. In Chester, where I saw some very attractive new development and regeneration work, I asked whether they had consulted CABE. The answer was yes. In Liverpool, where I was shown the models for the extremely ambitious Paradise Street development, again I asked the question, and yes, CABE looked at the matter there. I saw what I can only describe as a breathtaking development in the centre of Sheffield and again it emerged that CABE had been involved. I think local authorities go to CABE because they cherish its advice and it adds confidence.

Q248 Sir Paul Beresford: I am sure these were magnificent developments, but they could have been magnificent developments on paper before CABE came along. I do not know and I suspect you do not either. Would you not agree that one of the difficulties CABE has is that their position is such that local authorities and developers tend to use them just to make it easier to get through their planning?

Keith Hill: Equally I have no evidence to suggest that. What I do know, however, is that CABE each year looks at some 500 projects of significance and, as I said earlier, 83 per cent of those projects are modified in some fashion as a result of the input of CABE. So it does seem to me that CABE is having a material influence on the projects, presumably for the good.

Q249 Sir Paul Beresford: That could equally support my position as well.

Keith Hill: It seems to me that if you are asking whether it is easier to take something through the planning process if it has been improved, then I think the answer is probably yes and I think that is probably right as well.

Sir Paul Beresford: That is not what I was saying.

Q250 Christine Russell: Can I assure my friend across the table that the input of CABE on the particular design which the minister saw last week did improve it considerably. The question I should like to ask is that I believe last year you generously disbursed about £50 million to local planning authorities for improving the planning system. Do you actually know what they spent that money on and was any of that money spent by any of the local authorities on actually improving the standard of in-house planning designers or was it all spent on processing planning applications perhaps more rapidly?

Keith Hill: I think you are referring to planning delivery grant.

Q251 Christine Russell: Yes.

Keith Hill: In the current spending review period this is running at £350 million and I rather suspect, without having the figures immediately to hand, that it was considerably more than £50 million which was disbursed in that year. You ask me if we know whether it goes into ---

Q252 Christine Russell: I think the £50 million was referred to in your report as being spent on employing more planning officers. So really the question is what those additional planning officers were doing. Were they simply employed in order to process the applications more quickly or were perhaps some of them employed in order to improve the in-house design skills of the department?

Keith Hill: Since we know from surveys that some 46 per cent of the 98 per cent of planning delivery grant which is ploughed back into the local planning system went on staffing purposes, then £50 million probably does sound right. As to whether it went into architects or urban design consultants, I have to say that I do not know the answer to that. What we do know is that about 15 per cent of authorities only have that kind of expertise at their disposal, which is very low, which is too low, but I think probably reflects the very scarce resources that local authorities have had for their planning departments historically and also, I suspect, the relative scarcity of that kind of expertise. I say absolutely clearly that we would like to see that figure boosted. However, we are very encouraged by the fact that now some 43 per cent of local authorities have local design champions. These are, generally speaking, elected members of course, but that represents a doubling over a period of two years. It indicates, like the fact that about two thirds of authorities are now running local design award schemes, that is also a doubling in a two-year period, that local authorities are taking these issues of design very seriously indeed.

Q253 Christine Russell: But during the 1980s and 1990s so many local authorities actually got rid of their architects' departments, they were privatised or transferred or whatever. Some local authorities now argue that the resources that ODPM put into CABE should in fact be given to them to re-employ architects and designers. How do you answer that - not criticism - comment that the money would be better spent by local authorities, rather than by CABE?

Keith Hill: I think we ought to have some notion of scale on this. As you know, currently ODPM invest something like £8 million into CABE; £6 million for core funding, about £2 million actually specifically to improve skills in exactly the areas that we are talking about. Although these are significant sums, even against the sums of investment available through planning delivery grant that I mentioned earlier, they are not vast. I think actually I would certainly want to defend the investment which goes through CABE which serves broader purposes, but actually certainly serves both to enhance skills and also raise the profile of design at the local level.

Q254 Christine Russell: May I move on to ask you about the old versus the new. Several amenity societies and conservation groups have given us evidence saying that CABE is only interested in new buildings and icon new buildings at that. How do you answer that criticism?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think that CABE and English Heritage are complementary in this. I was listening from the back to the evidence from Richard Simmons and Paul Finch and I agree with all of what they said. I think that it is important to have heritage champions making their views known to government, both central government and local government, and encouraging the preservation of our heritage and its continuing use. That is what English Heritage does. I think it is also important that you have a champion, which is CABE, which is responsible for trying to improve the design of new buildings and also for recommending to government and to public policy the preservation of new architecture which has already been constructed, let us say over the past 30 years. That sometimes means that when the issue of the listing or possibly even the demolition of a relatively new building comes along English Heritage and CABE both express views to government. They may not be the same but they are coming at it from a different point of view and why not? I really do not see any conflict there.

Q255 Christine Russell: There may not be any conflict but surely often there can be a lot of expense if one of them is saying to developers or to local authorities that the answer is demolition and new build and the other one is saying, no, the answer is re-use, refurbishment.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is a much rarer occasion. What much more often happens, and this seems to be entirely proper and not in the least extravagant, is that you have a listed building which it is proposed to replace with a new building. English Heritage has the responsibility for recommending to the Secretary of State whether a building should be listed and therefore whether it should be preserved or subject to listed building consent. The Secretary of State has to respond to that only in terms of the quality of the existing building. That way the heritage is preserved without being muddied by the quality of the proposed redevelopment, otherwise all heritage could be a risk. CABE on the other hand, and I have seen this happen in individual applications, says that a new building is a good new building or is not a good new building and they do not have regard to the quality of the building it replaces. Both of those points of view need to be put.

Q256 Christine Russell: But it is not a good advert for joined-up government when two arm's-length bodies are both appearing at a public inquiry for instance into a planning application on different sides of the fence.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not see why not; they are judging different things. It seems to me that the heritage's interest, the interest of the historic environment, would be weakened if there were not a body dedicated to putting forward the best case for that and it seems to me that the quality of new design would be weakened if there were not a body dedicated to putting that forward. Both of them are proper considerations and it is up to the people concerned, the local planning authority, local people, everybody else, to make a judgment in the light of those views. They are both legitimate views.

Q257 Andrew Bennett: In your tour of northern England was it just accident that you did not call in to Denton? I raise the point because CABE does not seem to have reached Denton. We have just had a new Morrison's, which is hardly an advert for modern architecture and Crown Point North. They both provide very attractive jobs. Are you happy that CABE is really getting to the parts of Britain that it needs to reach?

Keith Hill: Actually, if I might say so Mr Bennett, your constituency experience is a little unusual by comparison with most of your colleagues sitting around this table. In our careful research for this particular session, we did look to see whether CABE had been present in the constituencies represented. It certainly has been present in mine, because you will know that two years ago it designated Streatham High Road the worst high street in the country. But that is another story.

Q258 Andrew Bennett: If you could come up with some good news, I would be pleased, but it does not look as though you are going to get any good news.

Keith Hill: Let me just say remember that the onus is on the local authorities to come to CABE.

Q259 Andrew Bennett: No, no; the onus should be on CABE to get to those parts of the country where good design does not seem to be dominating their thinking.

Keith Hill: Well I think it should work both ways.

Q260 Andrew Bennett: May I turn to Lord McIntosh and this question about the audit that you referred to at the beginning? Do you think that process was handled well? It took six months before you decided there was a problem, it then took six months to carry out the audit and it has taken you a long time now to find a replacement chairman, has it not? Is this speedy government?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We had complaints. Representations were made to us in March of this year. We set up an audit which reported, whose report we published in June.

Q261 Andrew Bennett: No, I think it goes back to May 2003 when CABE itself raised issues with you. It has taken a long time.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I was responsible for appointing AHL as the external audit on the complaints that I received and I received these representations in the first quarter of this year; I shall not be precise about the dates. The appointment of AHL was virtually immediate, certainly within weeks rather than months, and their report was published in June of this year. The chairman resigned in July of this year and the advertisement for the new chairman went out in August and the appointment has been made and the new chairman joins us in December. All of these things are too slow. You would not wish to have a period of six months without a chairman, although we have had, as you have heard, a very effective acting chairman in Paul Finch. If there are complaints about our procedures, I do not think I accept that they were slow and I certainly do not accept that we did not do the right thing. I did not think you said so.

Q262 Andrew Bennett: On this question of conflict of interests, is it not bound to occur with the development community being pretty small and overlapping commercial interests?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The phrase that the auditors used was "perception of conflict of interests". If there had been any evidence of wrongdoing, then of course it would not have gone to independent auditors, it would have gone to the police, but there were no allegations of wrongdoing. Perceptions of conflict of interests, yes, are difficult, but I think Paul Finch was right in saying to you, or it may have been Richard Simmons, that if you try to have commission and design review committee members who had no commercial or financial interest in any of the proposals coming before them, you would have a very weak body of people.

Q263 Andrew Bennett: Do you think you have the balance right?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: We have virtually completed the implementation of all of AHL's recommendations. The only one which is down to DCMS is the recommendation about procedures in the appointment of new commissioners and we shall implement them as new commissioners are appointed. I think that we have acted impeccably, if I may say so, in acting on those recommendations and CABE has as well.

Q264 Andrew Bennett: So you think eight CABE commissioners connected to Stanhope is a reasonable number.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The degree of connection with Stanhope varies very greatly indeed. If there had been any doubt about any of the individuals who had been named as being connected with Stanhope, then AHL would have said so to us, but they did not say so.

Q265 Chairman: To continue this issue of conflict of interests, obviously the whole of the audit arrangements stemmed from concerns over this but ultimately the transparency of the whole issue depends on commissioners registering their interests.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is right.

Q266 Chairman: And also highlighting them when a particular scheme is discussed so that they are not party to those discussions.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is right.

Q267 Chairman: Can we all be confident that happens? There was some suggestion that the problems which led to the audit were because individuals were not necessarily doing that.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I take the view that you can have, if you do not have it already, a statement of the recommendations made by AHL and the way in which they have been implemented. The most important thing is not only that commissioners and design review committee members should declare their interests at the outset, but that they should continue to declare their interest as they change and specifically they should declare their interests about any particular issue which might be coming before CABE and should not take any part in that. Those provisions are certainly in place and all of these actions have been taken in accordance with the Commission on Public Appointments.

Q268 Chairman: Do the commissioners at any point have to confirm that they accept and understand the Nolan principles? Is there any training for them in this? What happens if they fail to register or to announce an interest and take part in work in which they should not be involved? Would they have to resign immediately?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The answer to your first question is yes, we have ensured that they understand the Nolan principles.

Q269 Chairman: Do they have to sign something?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Yes. The answer to your second question is that we have a training programme which will take place in the first quarter of next year. I do not know that I can give the answer to your third question. If there were any suggestion that any commissioner or design review committee member had not declared a relevant interest, then of course action would be taken. No such indication has been made.

Q270 Chris Mole: The government is moving on apace in the growth and other areas with its sustainable communities agenda; that is a lot of housing. How can we ensure that design quality is not sacrificed in this process in the interests of delivering new homes?

Keith Hill: That is, as they say, a very good question. We begin by a restatement of the government's very clear commitment to the highest quality of design in the housing growth agenda. It is a matter of constant exhortation by government ministers. You will be familiar with the Deputy Prime Minister's enthusiasm for what he describes as the "wow factor" in new buildings. More than that, we do constantly, through guidance, indeed through legislation, because of course you will be familiar with the fact that the new Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 contains a climate for design statements, emphasise the importance that we give to design. As I go around the country speaking to planners, I emphasise to them that it is within their power to reject applications on the grounds of inadequate design and in the last 12 months, for example, ministers have called in planning applications on the grounds of design on five occasions. In a sense ministers are themselves demonstrating the importance in practice which they attach to this matter. Beyond that there is the issue of investment in local planning and the additional funding which is going in via planning delivery grant, which is designed to enhance standards. CABE itself, of course, does tremendous work in terms of training in design skills; something of the order of 4,000 days of training have been devoted to local authorities in terms of training for professionals, decision makers and lay persons. At a whole variety of levels we are conveying the message of the critical importance of design.

Q271 Chris Mole: The Committee is aware that one of the department's concerns in trying to meet the volumes of new housing is about the skills shortages in construction. You have been encouraging modern methods of construction in order to address some of these issues and to improve quality, but CABE have not been too complimentary about the design quality of resulting schemes which have followed this approach. Has this caused you to think twice about encouraging modern methods of construction?

Keith Hill: No, it has not. We see enormous benefits in terms of costs, in terms of efficiency and speed of delivery, in terms of health and safety in the work place; in terms also of quality through modern methods of construction. I do recognise the issue you refer to and which you tell me CABE has raised. The important thing to bear in mind is that the great majority of the costs of a building lie actually in the structure of the building behind the fabric of the building, behind the externalities of the building. We are very enthusiastic to ensure that those who are involved in off-site manufacture themselves recognise the opportunities in terms of materials, in terms of design, to produce something which is of high quality. I know it can be done because in one of my relatively rare foreign ventures in September of this year I went to Germany to see some practical examples of modern methods of construction. The Germans are very good at this. I saw exactly what a huge variety is available in terms of design through methods of off-site manufacture. It can be done, but we are very keen to ensure that it is done. Mass production does not necessarily mean monolithic design.

Q272 Chris Mole: Far be it for us to justify our foreign ventures as well, but we too saw some good examples of MMC in Singapore.

Keith Hill: May I say that as soon as I began going down that particular path I knew that I was into sensitive terrain and I want to assure you that there was absolutely no direct implication in my observations.

Q273 Chris Mole: "You set 'em up; I'll knock 'em in." CABE was touching on some of the concerns which have been expressed to us about design quality in PFI. Putting a PFI bid together is a long and complex procedure and a lot of people who do it feel that it is very difficult. Do you think there is enough opportunity on top of all that to encourage them to put good design quality through the Office of Government Commerce into PFI projects?

Keith Hill: Again I recognise the issue and in my own journeys in England the problem has been represented to me from time to time. Let me say that work with the Office of Government Commerce shows that all procurement routes can produce well-designed outputs, if done well. In other words, it is not the method, it is the way you apply it.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: And of course the fact that under PFI those who are responsible for construction have to be responsible for maintenance in the following years ought - and I am not saying it always does - to encourage them to have a design which is sustainable; that is one of the criteria for good design.

Q274 Chairman: Could you think of any examples of good design for PFI schemes which you might point to?

Keith Hill: May I write to the Committee?

Chairman: On that point I thank both ministers very much for their attendance.