Here is a brief statement from our founding chair on the announced closure of the Office for Place.
Nye Bevan said that ‘While we shall be judged for a year or two by the number of houses we build….we shall be judged in 10 years’ time by the type of houses we build.’
We set up the Office was Place to be independent, non-partisan and broadly based. For example, when I started the process, the then Chief Executive of the Power to Change fund, and now deputy chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, kindly served as my deputy chair.
Naturally I am hugely disappointed by this news and think that it is a mistake or I would not have set it up. In the, correct, dash for quantity there needs to be an independent voice for quality. Will that voice now be lost within Whitehall? We will find out. I hope not.
I guess my job now is to keep asking the questions.
The Office for Place was going to publish an annual review into place-making and beautiful and regenerative development across England. How many councils have visual design codes and pattern books in place? Are they authority-wide? Can they demonstrate that they are locally popular? Are they linked to fast-track development to help us build more homes with public consent? Are the codes making it possible for attractive intensification of existing streets? Above all, is the public’s confidence growing in our ability to create new homes and places without scarring existing neighbourhoods?
Will the Government still publish this? Is there a risk of them marking their own homework?
No one disagrees that we are going to need many more homes. The most common request from councils is for more staff. This is not surprising given the highly discretionary and inefficient way we have ended up running our planning system. The Office for Place did not have a magic wand to fix this. But the Government doesn’t have one of those either. We were designing the Office for Place as a “force multiplier.” Our intent was to help councils “move the democracy forward” and work smarter by setting clearer, more visual and more clearly locally popular policy to permit more homes with more public consent. This means that each individual planning application can be handled more efficiently without losing public good will.
If you like, we were trying to help not just force more development water down the planning pipe but to widen the pipe.
I wish the new government well in their important work. I stand ready to support them and to help. I am delighted that they are keeping important hooks in the planning system for beautiful and popular place-making. But will those hooks be enough without a small body committed to supporting councils put them into practice with enabling and popular local plans? We are going to find out.
Above all I would like to thank my marvellous board, our expert advisors and the brilliant officials who supported us tirelessly. I am so pleased that they will be able to move to new roles. We also had plans to bring in national expertise to support the regenerative development of our home, Stoke on Trent. It is a huge sadness to me that we will not now be able to put those into action.
I can only apologise to those in the place-making industry that our attempt to create a small, independent and powerful voice for the importance of place within government has hit the buffers. One day we will get there. And the mission to create new places and steward existing places to be happy and healthy, resilient and beautiful is never-ending.
Nicholas Boys Smith