ODPM wants you to have the write stuff

Esther Kurland, CABE planning policy advisor, discusses how the government requires design statements alongside virtually all planning applications.

The government insists that virtuall all planning applications must set out in simple terms their thinking, in design statements.

Are you one of those architects who thinks you can let the genius of your scheme speak for itself? If so, you will need to think again.

The deputy prime minister's office wants you to put down the drawings, pick up a pen and explain your design in plain English - that most elusive of languages for all too many architects.

The idea is that statements, explaining and justifying proposals, would be required with all planning applications except those for householder extensions, changes of use and mineral or engineering works.

That means you will need to explain your plans in writing even for a couple of houses in a suburban back garden, a new shop or office. If the proposals become reality, the planning system will be awash with your literary efforts and they will have a considerable bearing on the success of your application.

The first thing is to know your public. Think of the variety of audiences for any statement. The developer, the council planner, people like us at CABE, a public that is often non-plussed by planning application drawings, and councillors who on many schemes rush through decisions based on a quick look at the plans and a committee report.

Statements are going to have to work hard to be understood by such a wide audience. I feel sure that with the number of statements needed, long technical explanations will not go down well. Sharp, easy-to-read and relevant statements will mean a far wider audience than our present design community will be thinking about design. The process of writing down what you intend in prose that makes sense, focuses the mind in a way that could improve the quality of proposals, which too often seem to ignore local character or objectives.

I was recently looking at a housing scheme of standard blocks shoehorned into a site. It was next to a river, but you wouldn't know it from the layout, appearance or orientation of the blocks. That application didn't have a statement, it went to inquiry and was thrown out on design grounds. If the developer had had to justify the proposal in writing, or used a statement in negotiations, it would have come up with a better scheme.

Decisions may improve, too. Good schemes are often unfairly criticised, leading to refusal, and unnecessary appeals. Hackneyed objections such as 'out of scale' or 'harming amenity' are often based on ignorance and fear more than the development proposal itself. Statements could give applicants the opportunity to properly explain their schemes, potentially preventing, or at least answering, some such objections.

So statements are an opportunity. All fine and rosy if they are any good. But will they be?

I've seen examples with pages of generic waffle that bamboozle, bore and intimidate in equal measure. Then some statements seem to work backwards, trying to justify development decisions that have not been informed by a good design process. And, of course, there are the cut-and-paste jobs: cribbing so transparent that sometimes the development name has not even been changed from the original.

On the other side, those reading statements will need to give them the attention they deserve.

So are the ODPM's proposals sensible? Is it realistic to expect good quality statements on thousands of developments and that they will be responsibly read?

I think so. With its statement of planning principles published in PPS1, the government started a stream of strong policies requiring good design. Statements, if properly used, could give us a tool to bring these policies to life. Maybe they can help to democratise design issues, potentially making them, as PPS1 says, everyone's responsibility.