{"id":763625,"date":"2024-11-12T16:21:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T16:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/?p=763625"},"modified":"2024-11-18T16:09:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T16:09:46","slug":"office-for-place-scrapped-by-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government","title":{"rendered":"Office for Place scrapped by government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a statement made today (Tuesday, 12 November) in the Commons, Pennycook announced that the arms-length body would be dissolved and its staff reabsorbed back into the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).<\/p>\n<p>He said it was being wound up in order to make housing design and placemaking more efficient and fully integrated.<\/p>\n<p>In its place, the minister said he would be setting up \u2018quarterly steering boards\u2019 to support the \u2018delivery of more high-quality, well-designed homes\u2019 with expert design and placemaking guidance, which he said would be particularly relevant to new and larger sites including new towns.<\/p>\n<p>The Office for Place was set up in the wake of the 2020 <em>Living With Beauty<\/em> report by the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, which was co-chaired by Nicholas Boys Smith, founding director of pressure group Create Streets. Boys Smith was then appointed as the Office for Place\u2019s interim chair.<\/p>\n<p>Boys Smith was one of a small number of candidates who had been interviewed for the position of permanent chair \u2013 along with former RIBA president Ben Derbyshire and property expert and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/opinion\/why-closing-the-office-for-place-might-not-be-a-step-back-for-placemaking\">broadcaster Kunle Barker<\/a>. The candidates had been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-candidates-left-in-limbo-over-chair-appointment\">left in limbo<\/a> over the outcome since March.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">This is correct. When <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RobertJenrick?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@RobertJenrick<\/a> was Housing Secretary he put beauty at the heart of the case for new development. The Office for Place &#8211; a centre of architectural excellence &#8211; was central to that. I do hope ministers think again <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/akP2UMw8gH\">https:\/\/t.co\/akP2UMw8gH<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Michael Gove (@michaelgove) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/michaelgove\/status\/1856385874189005187?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 12, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The body had nevertheless continued operating since July\u2019s general election with Boys Smith acting as interim chair. Labour initially said it planned to retain both the Office for Place and the role of chair. Less than three months ago, MHCLG was advertising for several Office for Place roles including the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/the-office-for-place-is-recruiting-for-a-new-chief-executive-officer\">\u00a380,000-a-year post of chief executive<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c5y32ejjm3zo\">looking for a permanent base for the organisation in Stoke-on-Trent<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Boys Smith was paid \u00a3500 per day for a two-day week in this role, equating to \u00a352,000 between September 2023 and September of this year. The AJ understands the decision to scrap the office came as a surprise to the candidates.<\/p>\n<p>Pennycook said: \u2018I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the interim board, led by Nicholas Boys Smith as chair, and the Office for Place team for their exemplary work on this important issue.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018In putting design and quality at the heart of the housing supply agenda and establishing the principles of design coding and embedding them in practice across the planning and development sectors, Nicholas and the team have made a significant contribution.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Pennycook said that, following the \u2018resetting of departmental budgets\u2019, he and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had \u2018concluded that support to improve the quality and design of new homes and places can be more efficiently and effectively delivered by the department itself\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The minister insisted the government was \u2018not downgrading the importance of good design and placemaking, or the role of design coding in improving the quality of development\u2019. He added: \u2018We want exemplary development to be the norm not the exception.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u2018Rather, by drawing expertise and responsibility back into MHCLG, I want the pursuit of good design and placemaking to be a fully integrated consideration as the government reforms the planning system, rolls out digital local plans and provides support to local authorities and strategic planning authorities.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Pennycook said the decision would not affect wider government commitments to Stoke-on-Trent, where the Office for Place headquarters was being established, including the \u00a319.8 million the city had been promised in Levelling Up funding.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere in his speech, Pennycook said the MHCLG intended to update the National Design Guide and National Model Design Code next spring, and reaffirmed the government\u2019s commitment to \u2018continue to bolster design skills and capacity through the \u00a346 million package of capacity and capability support provided to local planning authorities\u2019.<\/p>\n<div class=\"factfile\">\n<h3>Comment: &#8216;Without the Office for Place we must hope that design quality is not forgotten&#8217;<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Former RIBA president Ben Derbyshire <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Without the Office for Place we must hope that design quality is not forgotten in the new homes that the government has committed to build, and in the re-use and renovation of existing buildings it must also deliver if the nation is to meet its climate commitments.<\/p>\n<p>The New Towns Task Force has been asked to ensure that quality and design are integral to its agenda, and it does have an architect amongst its number.\u00a0It\u2019s good to see that Office for Place personnel are to be brought back into MHCLG where quarterly Steering Boards on design and placemaking are intended to ensure work is guided by those with relevant professional and practical expertise.<\/p>\n<p>Any future Office for Place equivalent must eschew populist rhetoric and follow in the footsteps of the late, lamented CABE as a champion of good, contemporary design. It provided excellent guidance, research and exemplary design review processes.\u00a0 Local planning departments still desperately need an accessible central resource such as that. Now we must think again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"factfile\">\n<h3><strong>Comment: &#8216;I am hugely disappointed by this news&#8217;<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Office for Place interim chair and Create Streets founder Nicholas Boys Smith<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nye Bevan said that \u2018While we shall be judged for a year or two by the number of houses we build\u2026 we shall be judged in 10 years\u2019 time by the type of houses we build.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally I am hugely disappointed by this news and think that it is a mistake or I would not have set it up.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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?<\/p>\n<p>Above all, is the public\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n<p>No one disagrees that we are going to need to 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\u2019t have one of those either.<\/p>\n<p>We were designing the Office for Place as a \u201cforce multiplier\u201d, helping \u201cmove the democracy forward\u201d and work smarter by setting clearer, more visual and more clearly locally popular local 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Nonsensical to scrap the Office for Place which was about ensuring we saw beautiful and sustainable development.<\/p>\n<p>Tragically the Government has axed new jobs and investment in Stoke-on-Trent, weeks after plans for a \u00a340 million new Home Office HQ in Stoke-on-Trent was also axed. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DTmctZ1uG7\">pic.twitter.com\/DTmctZ1uG7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jonathan Gullis (@GullisJonathan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GullisJonathan\/status\/1856375520939655396?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 12, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em>See Opinion: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/opinion\/why-closing-the-office-for-place-might-not-be-a-step-back-for-placemaking\">Why closing the Office for Place might not be a step back for placemaking<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a statement made today (Tuesday, 12 November) in the Commons, Pennycook announced that the arms-length body would be dissolved and its staff reabsorbed back into the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). He said it was being wound up in order to make housing design and placemaking more efficient and fully integrated. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138919,"featured_media":763722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[681],"tags":[76654,1155,5570,65565],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Office for Place scrapped by government<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Office for Place, the government body set up in 2021 to champion good design and placemaking, is to be scrapped, housing minister Matthew Pennycook has announced\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Office for Place scrapped by government\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Office for Place, the government body set up in 2021 to champion good design and placemaking, is to be scrapped, housing minister Matthew Pennycook has announced\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Architects\u2019 Journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-11-12T16:21:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-11-18T16:09:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.emap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2024\/11\/13092456\/Untitled-design-2024-11-12T161750.516-1600x1067-copy2-1024x683.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Anna Highfield, will hurst\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Anna Highfield\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government\",\"name\":\"Office for Place scrapped by government\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-11-12T16:21:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-11-18T16:09:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/a0c53f8ef918e29ea9d62857f8525eb3\"},\"description\":\"The Office for Place, the government body set up in 2021 to champion good design and placemaking, is to be scrapped, housing minister Matthew Pennycook has announced\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/office-for-place-scrapped-by-government#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Office for Place scrapped by government\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Architects\u2019 Journal\",\"description\":\"Architecture News &amp; 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