Connecting planning with building control

Continued...

Our aim is then to see if it is possible to aggregate all the individual clients within a combined planning approval process and Building Control system. That would realise a tremendous economy of scale in research and development of design and construction for the individual clients, and would massively reduce the administrative burden on councillors, planners and building control officers.

Fortunately it is possible to aggregate all the individual clients within a combined planning and building control approvals process, and it comes from the experiences of the larger house builders. There is a way for local authorities to plan repetitive buildings like housing, and which does not mean a return to council house building. This is based on the established Local Authority Building Control "type" approval system, and I believe it could liberate planning approvals and construction R&D from the sequence of:

SITE IDENTIFICTION - SPATIAL AND AESTHETIC PLANNING APPROVAL - CONSTRUCTION TECHNICALITIES - WORKMANSHIP - TESTING PRIOR TO OCCUPANCY - LABC APPROVAL

I believe that the LABC "type" approvals scheme was precisely developed by and for the larger house builders so that they could work to the sequence of:

CONSTRUCTION TECHNICALITIES WITH AESTHETIC INTENT - TESTING OF SEQUENTIAL PROTOTYPES - LABC "Type" APPROVAL - SITE IDENTIFICTION - SPATIAL AND AESTHETIC PLANNING APPROVAL - WORKMANSHIP - OCCUPANCY

Now obviously planners and building control officers do distinct jobs. The aim of LABC "type" approvals was to sequence the business of batch housing production so that building control officers could do their specialised job better, by working earlier with the larger house builders, and their retained consultants. Taken further, in an effort to meet the aggregated needs of many individuated clients in a locality, and to relate planning approvals closer to building control approvals, the "type" approvals approach could be a sequence of:

CONSTRUCTION TECHNICALITIES WITH SPATIAL AND AESTHETIC PLANNING APPROVAL - TESTING OF SEQUENTIAL PROTOTYPES - TYPE APPROVAL FOR A LOCALITY - SITE IDENTIFICTION - WORKMANSHIP - OCCUPANCY

There is one innovation on current LABC practice here - the willingness of the planning officers and the committee members to democratically approve designs prior to site identification by individual clients. To work with those with an interest in the construction to develop typical housing designs that could be approved as repeatable projects, or manufactured as products, for location on sites with pre-determined spatial arrangements.

The innovation is an opportunity for planners to proactively encourage local housing typologies, to meet the currently frustrated demands of many individuals. To do that through the established democratic process as a form of Permitted Development Right or a Local Development Order. More than a "design code", which carries no technical substance, this would be an invitation to produce pattern books of pre-approved designs, much like eighteenth or nineteenth century precedents, only with technical and practical R&D invested in the house and flat types.

The party with an interest in the construction need not be a builder at all. They may be one of a number of major construction product manufacturers. Those construction materials or system producers may then finance consultants and undertake the lengthy R&D required by the LABC for Code Level 5 housing. Having invested in those pattern books, confident that "Type Approval" meant individual customers had no more approvals to obtain, the materials or system manufacturers would then be in the business of competing locally for market size and share.

Competition would still exist amongst manufacturers, since the planning approval could be sought by anyone with the capital to invest in obtaining it. Competition would be fierce between materials and system manufacturers, all of whom would have to think not in simple terms of their own materials sector, but in terms of the whole house system.

In that way the Code for Sustainable Homes would be a spur to capital investment and commercial competition. The aim being to attract more individuals to build anew, or replace their poorly performing home, and thereby spread the cost of the "Type Approval" process, and the periodic revisions, across a larger run of sales. That would tend to suggest a better product, service, after sales support, and finance package, all based on a pattern book that had been democratically argued over and agreed long before any site was identified. Before anyone instructed a home to be built.

There is no reason why planning approvals and building control could not be more experimentally sequenced in the twenty-first century. While the existing sequence would still operate for those wanting to identify sites before applying for planning approval, the innovation of planners working democratically with materials producers would create benefits for the electorate. Indeed, seen against international practices, Britain's separation of land use planning and the building control inspectorate is anachronistic.

Building control originated from Local Improvement Acts. Starting in eighteenth century London, local building regulations stimulated by the Great Fire of 1666 were codified in the London Building Act of 1774. By the 1840s progress was being made everywhere in sanitation, water supply, ventilation, and access to day-light. 1866 saw the Sanitation Act, and 1871 the creation of the Local Government Board. New utilities infrastructure suggested a national system of regulations, but local councillors only had the authority to impose local bye-laws. Model bye-laws were often adopted from the late 1850s, achieving technical consistency for builders and new design professionals.

Population growth made the local approach needlessly bureaucratic, and Model bye-laws contained within them the potential for nationally applicable building regulations.

In 1920 Sir Ernest Moir was Chairman of the Committee for Standardisation and New Methods of Construction. Novel construction "systems" were imagined to overcome serious materials and skilled labour shortages after the First World War. But labour skills recovered, and materials flowed again. The subsidies for "innovations" in the Housing, Town Planning Act had little effect on their application. Christopher Addison's 1919 Act required that local authorities provide "council housing" for rent. Both public and private house building standardised typologically, mostly around masonry construction.

Although a Public Health Act was passed in 1875, 1936 and 1961, the first National Building Regulations came late in 1965. Three years before annual production in Britain peaked at 413,000 homes. Thereafter central government withdrew from funding local authorities to build council housing, and there is no sign that the policy of greater reliance on private finance and the property market is about to be reversed.

Building Control has operated nationally for four decades, with devolution of Scottish regulations, and must deliver the improvements in building performance demanded by government. However building control officers are under-resourced, and the Code for Sustainable Homes must seem daunting. Leaving aside the imponderable and hotly debated issue of Code Level 6, getting the rational construction technology right to Code Level 5 is a challenge. Even before construction standards are improved the plethora of site tests and "robust details" are mostly observed in the breach. To cope better in earlier times the LABC promoted the pre-approval of "types" as whole building systems. It may be that taking their logic further will be benefical to overstretched planners too.

The pre-history of national building control took four centuries. When the post-war government nationalised development rights in the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, they failed to unify planning with building production. Planning legislation has been revised constantly since. Planners could take existing legislation and reconcile it with the earlier innovations in building control. This is something audacity is exploring, and an issue for our conference All Planned Out? on 18 and 19 May 2007.

The "Type Approved" designs could be purchased over the local authority counter from the full range of pattern books sanctioned by the elected planning committee, their officers, and the LABC inspectors working in concert. The prospective client and their contractors could set about building precisely to the pre-approved detailed design on a multiplicity of small plots, without further delay. Scaled up, a "Type Approvals" approach might develop regions through building and planning regulation in one administrative system. "Type Approvals" could be used on "brownfield" sites, in previously developed areas, or rolled out across growth areas of "greenfield" land.

Could Britain combine building and planning approvals into one "Type Approvals" system?

It is possible to answer that on a small scale. I suggest the innovation could be proven by one local authority, one material or system manufacturer, and a sensitive architect to lead a minimal number of good consultants, to produce an approved pattern book…

… and perhaps building a few demonstration homes.

That was how things were changed 100 years ago. The lesson is to be found in Letchworth, in the 1907 Cottages Competition. A design effort led locally resulted in a small number of demonstration cottages, costing between £175 and £300, and train loads of would-be home owners travelling to the nascent Garden City.

They are still occupied after countless modifications and building services upgrades. Moreover, Letchworth influenced housing in Britain and internationally.

That could be done again.

The question is: who will do it better in 2007?

I look forward to your thoughts.

Ian Abley 05.04.2007 (2 of 2)

Let's allow everyone to participate Colin Davies writes to Ian Abley, 21.06.2007

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