Carrot top

The drive to accommodate more households within the existing built environment has already begun to make the transition from political football to hard business. The strategy’s basic building blocks of more “dwellings per hectare” but less accompanying parking, wrapped up in a non-suburban housing form, clearly signalled more than 12 months ago, has directly influenced a series of new and even revised planning applications by developers which propose to increase their site coverage and maximise sales - at the government’s behest.

That the government wants this from housebuilders was flagged up in the Sustainable Residential Quality paper jointly issued in January 1998 by the DETR, Government Office for London and London Planning Advisory Committee. A summary of the document compiled by planning consultant Llewelyn Davies cuts straight to it: “A design-led approach can make a real difference to the potential released. The illustrative schemes in the SRQ study show that the relaxing planning standards, whilst designing appropriately for the site and its surroundings, can increase by 50% the amount of housing that a site can accommodate. Where car parking requirements are removed altogether, the potential can be doubled.” The guide demonstrates exactly how, offering three design concepts for the development of a small gap site on the edge of a town centre.

The guide’s proposals were repeated almost verbatim in February in the government command paper, “Planning for the communities of the future”. It advocated “a more flexible approach” for “particularly density and car parking standards” “to unlock the full potential of sites for housing which the blanket application of standards often prevents”.

So the strictures of each Unitary Development Plan must be weighed up in the light of the need to make each site count. That was how London Greenwich Borough Council was able to sanction the Millennium Village masterplan in April last year that proposed to build at average density of 172 habitable rooms per acre - and in parts as much as twice its UDP of 125. It was not long before the planners just across the Thames at Tower Hamlets hinted to the architect of Bellway’s Boardwalk development at Poplar Dock next to the multi-storey Canary Wharf that some of RMA’s medium-rise designs might be favourably treated if they were resubmitted to take advantage of the changes in planning guidance. The result - a revision from the original detailed approval for seven storeys to 14 without any recommendation for extra parking allocation, went before planning committee on 28 January [1999] with the support of the officers involved.

Says Bellway Homes (Essex) managing director Keith Haddrell: “The officers of Tower Hamlets had clearly taken on board the recommendations of the government. So a feasibility study was prepared by our architects RMA and discussed in detail with them. As a result, a planning application for a further 43 units was submitted which awaits determination.”

Part of the pre-committee horsetrading related to the developer’s nervousness about marketing 43 prime properties without any parking allocation, an area where compromise will be needed for the government initiative to spread. Continues Haddrell: “As Mark Twain roughly said, ‘they don’t make land any more’ and clearly we have a duty to maximise all development land, especially brownfield, thus ensuring we can meet housing demands without unnecessary incursion onto greenfield sites. Tower Hamlets officers were also most mindful that we did not compromise design and environmental standards.”

The key is design quality, plus a wary eye on environmental impact: Bellway’s revised building faces mostly water, busy highway and its own access road. But first indications of the new planning regime - even before it is crystallised in a PPG3 or Urban White Paper - suggest that if you have a good architect, excellent transport links close by and some forgiving neighbours, your next scheme could offer more profit than it does at present.