Architecture and the Built Environment

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, in my three minutes, I shall touch on just two themes from this excellent and complex report. The first is well-being. It is some years since David Cameron said in a speech that,

“it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB—general wellbeing”.

He understood that economic growth is not an end; it is a means to lives of well-being. That, of course, was understood by the pioneers of planning in this country—for example, those who were responsible for the garden cities movement which, after some hesitation, I think that the Government are again embracing.

Sir Terry Farrell and his distinguished panel want planning inspired by vision, not snagged in process; that is proactive rather than reactive; that is collaborative rather than adversarial. The National Planning Policy Framework touches on a crucial point when it speaks of,

“health, social and cultural wellbeing”,

but it fails to assert that the promotion of well-being should be the overarching objective of the planning system. I am proud to say, however, that the Norwich and Norfolk plan—that is where I live—declares that:

“All development will be expected to maintain or enhance the quality of life and the well being of communities”.

In that spirit, Farrell seeks to broaden design review into a more holistic place-shaping strategy. We need planners to work with health and well-being boards and other service providers. We need planners fully engaging with communities, and confidently and naturally integrating the heritage with the new. If we have planning with that kind of vision, instead of the crises of housing, floods and energy supply and the negativism and resentment about the planning system that we have at the moment, we would have a planning system of vision and ambition that worked towards creating cohesive and confident communities.

The second theme is education. Farrell wants decision-makers—for example, members of planning committees—to be trained in design literacy. I, too, say to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that that is a reasonable challenge. At the minimum, we want planners who know how to read a plan. Just as it is accepted that elected members need to be trained in certain legal and financial skills, so, surely, they ought to be in planning skills. I believe that could be done.

Farrell calls for a multidisciplinary common foundation year for the formation of all built environment professionals: planners, architects, landscapers, conservationists, developers, surveyors, engineers and builders. He wants more routes to qualification. That is surely an idea whose time has come. Ministers should endorse it and professional and academic leaders should get on with it. He wants the public to be better educated—of course, they will need to be if they are to rise to the challenge and opportunity of forming neighbourhood plans. He wants more architectural centres, urban rooms, events such as heritage open days, open house and architecture festivals. In schools, he wants teachers to be supported with some training and useful materials, so that we can gradually build an informed public with higher expectations.

We need to develop a culture that demands quality, so that, in the end, there will not be a market for rubbish, for the second-rate buildings that the big retailers and the volume housebuilders inflict on us. We also need to emancipate local government to make room again for civic pride and ambition and to allow councillors to have the power to take decisions in the interests of the well-being of their communities and not be overruled by an inspectorate.

We need leadership at every level and, indispensably, across government. So I await with excitement the response of the noble Lord, Lord Bates.