Our thoughts on the National Model Design Code consultation

These are certainly interesting times to be working in planning and urban design. The Government has great ambitions for overhauling key parts of the planning system, improving housing delivery and raising the standard of design across the country. Essentially, a ‘levelling up’ of design standards nationally. There is also no shortage of ideas out there on how to improve the planning system or deliver better design in villages, towns and cities.

Despite the present situation around the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government is currently consulting on another document, a National Model Design Code (NMDC). In our view, the NMDC represents a positive shift overall in design policy, particularly coming from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG). Prepared by URBED, a design and research consultancy based in Manchester, it is well structured and written, and we feel that the idea of setting out what should be included in a local design guide or code is a good one, even if having a national model to guide something that is inherently local might seem disingenuous. If one objective of the NMDC is to help ‘level up’ the quality of design across the country, then this can only be a good thing. 

To provide further analysis, we have examined what is included in the NMDC and reviewed the accompanying guidance notes to set out our own thoughts about how the code might work in practice.

The preparation of the NMDC needs to be set in the context of other changes currently occurring in the national planning picture. Much will depend on the outcome of the Government’s White Paper, Planning for the Future (published August 2020) and, whether local design guides and codes will be part of the concept of permission in principle, which has been suggested. If permission in principle gets rolled out in some shape or form, then design guides and codes will play a central role in the development process of new sites, especially in relation to housing. The proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which is also subject to consultation until March 27 2021, are too of interest and place much greater emphasis on the benefits and use of guides and codes. Therefore, it is highly likely that we will see many more guides and codes being prepared in future.

The NMDC appears to firmly place the responsibility of preparing future design guides or codes in the hands of Local Planning Authorities (LPAs). Much has been said already in the press and on social media about the challenges faced by LPAs who, in many cases, simply do not have the resources or the skills needed to prepare design guides or codes for their areas. We all know LPA resources are, in many cases, overloaded already. The Government is surely aware of this fact and the pressure LPAs are under to deliver more housing and meet their targets. Not least getting on with preparing updated Local Plans amidst a changing landscape of planning policy and practice. It therefore remains to be seen who will author most guides and codes in practice, but in all likelihood, it will be a varied picture nationally of LPAs working with developers, housebuilders and consultancies.  

To support the roll out of design guides and codes, the Government is in the process of choosing several pilot projects, each put forward by LPAs. With the first pilots due to report this spring, it will be interesting to see how successfully the 10 proposed pilots work in practice, which authorities are selected for pilots, and what they choose to code (urban extensions, brownfield sites, or town centres for example). As with any design code, the proof is in the testing and the pilots cannot be fully and properly tested without development happening on the ground. We will await the outcome of the pilots with interest.

A key point of the NMDC is the inclusion of local residents in the preparation of guides and codes.  Engaging the public on the detail of a guide or code is likely to be challenging in our view. By their very nature, design codes tend to be technical and multi-faceted tomes of detail and illustrations, making them tricky to digest for those who are not familiar with the intricacies of place making. The debate about what comprises ‘beautiful’ as set out in the earlier report by the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission entitled ‘Living with Beauty’, will no doubt persist and opinion will be divided about what constitutes good, or bad, design. One person’s ‘beautiful’ may be another’s ‘ugly’.

As a result of the new NMDC, some have questioned whether housebuilders will be expected to deliver a ‘better’ and more ‘beautiful’ product in line with a code rather than what they are building and selling now. Some housebuilders have argued that they design and build homes which are acceptable to their customers and the market, so why would they spend more on design when they can’t see the need to do so. In other words, the ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken’ argument. In other scenarios, when the planning ‘balance’ argument arises, could we see more appeals of applications refused on design grounds in areas that cannot demonstrate a five-year housing land supply? In practice, we hope that the debate on whether ‘good design costs more’ has, in most cases, largely run its course as good design has been proven to reap financial, and other, rewards time and again. 

Therefore, will anything change in practice because of the NMDC? It seems unlikely in the short term, though in the longer term we may see the production of more codes and guidance in areas not already using them, especially for large-scale sites involving mixed-used and residential-led development. In our view, Councils are unlikely to be the authors of design codes but they may take the opportunity to prepare new design guidance in the knowledge that the NPPF firmly supports their production and application. For LPAs already experienced in the use of guides and codes, things are unlikely to change a great deal as they are already a familiar part of their toolkit and developers and housebuilders working in these areas know this already. Design codes are still likely to be prepared by developers, housebuilders and their advisors until such time as LPAs have the capacity, in-house skills and desire to prepare them. 

In summary, good design delivered at a national scale cannot be taken as a given, and the NMDC may help raise the bar in this respect – only time will tell. As to predictions about the future success of the NMDC, it is likely that the answer will depend on the wider changes to the planning system that are expected and whether design guides and codes are given greater weight in local and national decision making. It is certainly looking like they will if proposed changes to the NPPF are taken forward. With the above in mind, we believe there are interesting times ahead indeed.