Planning & Design Practice Ltd Archives - Page 32 of 33

Multinational company invests £150m in Sheffield development

5th December 20224th May 2020 by Gary Stringer

The multinational financial services company, Legal & General has announced that it is investing £150m into the West Bar Square development in Sheffield.

Legal & General, together with Sheffield City Council, and the developer Urbo (West Bar) Ltd – a joint venture between Urbo Regeneration and Peveril Securities – will deliver a ‘mixed-use’ project for the area.

The development will comprise 200,000 sq. ft. of Grade A office space, 350 ‘Build to Rent’ homes, a multi-storey car park and landscaped public spaces.

The first phase will deliver much needed modern office space, currently lacking within Sheffield’s property market, which is expected to house up to 1,800 workers.

Nigel Wilson, CEO of Legal & General, said: “There has never been a more important time to invest in our regional cities.

“Legal & General is in a unique position to support the UK economic recovery by recycling hard earned savings and pensions into real assets which promote job creation – through construction to office occupation – and create landmark master plans which incorporate grade A office space, a variety of housing and high quality public space.

“This is not new territory for L&G. Our investment partnerships in cities such as Cardiff and Newcastle are already delivering at pace. Likewise our vision for West Bar Square is to deliver a much needed new quarter for the centre of Sheffield.

“During these unprecedented times, it is absolutely imperative that institutions continue to push forward with deals such as these, so we can position the UK for an accelerated recovery and lay the groundwork to support those most in need in society.”

Peter Swallow, Managing Director of Urbo Regeneration said: “This is a massively significant investment for Sheffield, and is a vote of confidence in the future of the city as a whole, particularly during the current climate.

“The funding partnership we have agreed with Legal and General will guarantee delivery of large scale regeneration in this important part of the city, linking the rapidly expanding Kelham Island district to the city centre.”

The creation of West Bar Square will complement the neighbouring Riverside Business District which already has office occupiers including the Home Office, law firm Irwin Mitchell and the Crown and Family Courts.

Michael Bamford, Associate at Planning & Design Practice Ltd, who heads up our Sheffield office welcomed the announcement.

“It’s great to see investment in Westbar and it has come at a good time. Kelham is certainly a success story for Sheffield but in order to ensure that it continues to be an attractive place to live, it needs to be better connected to the City. The Westbar area currently acts as a divide between the City centre and Kelham Island. Delivering a mixed use scheme in this location will help to bridge that gap which will be a positive thing not just for Kelham but for Sheffield as whole.”

Image: 5plus Architects

Planning for the future

5th December 202230th April 2020 by Gary Stringer

On the 12th March the government published a policy paper ‘Planning for the Future’ which sets out its plans for housing and planning following announcements in the 2020 Budget.

The paper starts with a reaffirmation of its support for home ownership and its commitment to re-building a home owning Britain. It also promises that young people and future generations will have the same opportunities as those who came before them.

The Government set out its plan for four publications:

A new White Paper on planning reform
A building safety bill
A renter’s reform bill
A social housing white paper

The government acknowledge that it does have a role to ensure security of tenure for those who do not own their own homes and the need to prevent homelessness and build more affordable homes. A social housing white paper will look at social housing and the needs of tenants while the building safety bill will ensure tighter building control and possibly reforms of the system to prevent a repeat of Grenfell.

The government wants to promote more development where it is needed. New proposals include:

Encouraging increased densities in urban areas
£400m for brownfield regeneration
Creation of a national brownfield map and a call to build above railway stations
Changing the formula to calculate local housing need in and around urban areas to deliver 300,000 new homes
New permitted development rights to build upwards on existing buildings by the summer of 2020
Consultation on new permitted development rights to allow demolition of existing vacant commercial, industrial and residential buildings and their replacement with well- designed new residential units
Support for self-build and community construction
Support for the Oxford Cambridge Arc including a new spatial development framework and up to 4 new development corporations

The government wants to ensure that sufficient land is available to deliver homes where they are needed:

All LPAs to have an up to date Local Plan in place by December 2023
Raising the housing delivery test to 75% in November 2020
Reforming the New Homes Bonus

The government pledge a commitment to ‘infrastructure first’

Investing in infrastructure to unlock up to 70,000 new homes
Creating a new £10bn single Housing Infrastructure Fund

The government want to speed up the Planning system by:-

Maximising the potential of new technologies
Reforming planning fees to ensure that planning authorities are properly resourced.
Rebates where planning applications are successful on appeal
The government will act to make it clearer who owns land to encourage the build out of sites
Expanding the use of Local Development Orders to simplify granting of planning permission in selected areas.
Improving the effectiveness of Compulsory Purchase Orders to aid land assembly and infrastructure delivery

The government wants to help first time buyers by:

The ‘First Homes Scheme’ will lower the cost of many new homes by a third and the discount will be locked into the property in perpetuity
Help to create fixed rate long term mortgages
Creation of a new national shared ownership model

The Government also wants to build better, more beautiful places by:

Revisions to the NPPF to embed the principles of good design and place making
Respond to the Building Better, Building Beautiful commissions report
Using the National Model Design Code to promote the production of local design codes and guides.
Review the policies regarding building in flood zones
Introduction of a Future Homes standard reducing carbon emissions from new homes by 80%
Establishing a net zero development around Toton between Derby and Nottingham.

This list of proposals is ambitious but there is no mention of regional or strategic planning which has the potential to direct development to where it is really needed. However the ambition is to be welcomed, but some of the proposals such as building upwards run counter to improved building safety, heritage restrictions and other constraints and may be limited to very specific locations.

Jonathan Jenkin, Managing Director, Planning & Design Practice Ltd

Improving tall building safety following Grenfell

5th December 202217th April 2020 by Gary Stringer

(This article is taken from the ‘The Planner’ Dated 7th April 2020.)

Late last week, housing secretary Robert Jenrick announced a series of measures comprising what he called ‘the biggest change in building safety for a generation” to building safety systems.

Jenrick said the measures include mandatory sprinkler systems and consistent wayfinding signage in all new high-rise blocks of flats over 11 metres tall/three storeys in height – dramatically reducing the height at which such systems are required.

The reforms are designed to incentivise compliance and better enable the use of enforcement powers and sanctions – including prosecution where the rules are not followed.

The housing secretary will also hold a round table with mortgage lenders to work on an approach to mortgage valuations for properties in buildings under 18 metres tall, with the aim of providing certainty for owners affected by building safety work.

He said: “The government is bringing about the biggest change in building safety for a generation. We have made a major step towards this by publishing our response to the Building a Safer Future consultation. This new regime will put residents’ safety at its heart and follows the announcement of the unprecedented £1 billion fund for removing unsafe cladding from high-rise buildings in the Budget.

“We are also announcing that the housing industry is designing a website so lenders and leaseholders can access the information needed to proceed with sales and re-mortgaging, and the government stands ready to help to ensure this work is completed at pace.

“Building safety is a priority and the government is supporting industry in ensuring homes are safe at this difficult time.”

These new measures build on a series of recent declarations:

An announcement in The Budget of £1 billion of funding in 2020/21 to support the remediation of unsafe non-ACM cladding materials on high-rise buildings. This is in addition to the £600 million already available for remediation of high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding.
The proposed naming of building owners who have been slow to act in removing unsafe ACM cladding.
Introduction of the fire safety bill, which constitutes a step further in delivering the recommendations of the Grenfell Inquiry’s phase one report.

The latest non-ACM (aluminium composite material) cladding testing results have also been published. They show that none of the materials, including high-pressure laminate (HPL) and timber cladding, behaved in the same way as ACM. The government is making it clear that any unsafe materials should be removed from buildings quickly. External wall systems on high-rise buildings using class C or D HPL panels are unsafe and should be removed, as they do not comply with building regulations.

We welcome these measures to improve tall building safety and they should ensure (once implemented) that external cladding will never again pose a threat to occupiers. The introduction of sprinklers should also reduce the incidence of fire within individual flats, particularly caused by white goods (the source of the Grenfell fire), and the proposed introduction of clear way marking, will provide residents with a clear route for escape if smoke becomes a problem or if there is a power cut.

Jonathan Jenkin, Consultant, Planning & Design Practice Ltd

Let’s talk about 3D printing and COVID 19

5th December 20228th April 2020 by Gary Stringer

Health care services are under pressure across the globe due to staff and medical equipment shortages. As a result of this, people have begun to find innovative ways, including 3D printing to overcome these difficulties.

Governments have organised their resources across many industries in order to support us. But there are also public initiatives breaking conventional barriers, sharing knowledge and resources, because where a more urgent approach is needed the machinery of government procurement can be all too slow. It has been really inspiring to read almost daily of how 3D printing has begun to show its potential and also how a myriad of universities, professionals, maker enthusiasts, engineers and designers from every field have been working proposing new ideas to provide PPE equipment, improving current designs in order to produce parts for ventilators on site and ad hoc, buying precious time.

The use of open sources technologies and social networks are the perfect way for people to find innovative solutions. Producing face masks and respirator valves, individuals and smaller companies are reacting quickly making small quantities while larger companies will be delivering orders by the thousand a few weeks from now.

For example at the hospital of Brescia, Italy, it was possible to make enough respirator parts to allow patients to breathe again thanks to the donation of a 3D printer by a local person. Of course, there have been issues about meeting medical grade adequacy or in relation to breaches of manufacturers’ patents. But due to the current scenario where hospitals are trying to cope with a state of continuous emergency and scarcity, every available option is no doubt welcome and 3D printing is there to help.

3D printing has been explored since the 80’s from the military to the public sector, and today, it is being used regularly to manufacture mechanical parts for the automotive industry, Formula 1, prosthetics, to name a few. A local example is Rolls-Royce, which recently unveiled the largest metal part made by 3D printing – a component for a Trent XWB-97 aircraft engine.

In construction innovation is key and already whole buildings have been completed across the world. In these past weeks, temporary quarantine rooms in China were made from concrete or other material aggregates, providing weather-proof space to host patients, health care staff or as storage for medical resources. A bright future is ahead of us all and who knows if the technology will not only help us to tackle some of the immediate hurdles ahead, but also issues like providing better housing or reducing environmental impact and climate change.

In the meantime following this European initiative and as a 3d printer aficionado, I’ll turn on my 3D printer at home and make as many PPE mask as possible for our local NHS staff.

Thanks for reading.

Fernando Collado Lopez, Architect, Planning & Design Practice Ltd

New student development planned for Sheffield

5th December 20227th April 2020 by Gary Stringer

A new student development combining flats with commercial units beneath has been submitted to Sheffield City Council. The proposal is hoped to provide 220 student flats as well commercial space in an area of the City that is undergoing major regeneration and redevelopment at the moment.

Crosslane Group, supported by Urbana Town Planning and Cartwright Pickard, has submitted an application to Sheffield City Council for a development on Fitzwilliam Street.

The application seeks planning permission for the demolition of the existing industrial building on the site and construction of a new 13 storeys building to provide a mixture of flats and commercial space. At this stage, the proposed indicate a total of 225 student bedrooms, provided over 201 studios and 12 two-bed apartments complete with amenity areas and a rooftop terrace. Two commercial units are also proposed for the ground floor fronting onto Fitzwilliam Street and Bowland Street.

No car parking is proposed on site but secure cycle parking will be provided on the ground floor, an increasing feature of city centre development across the country. The attraction of city centre development is the access to services and facilities. Sheffield train station is within walking distance from the site and there is little need for occupants to have a car.

The scheme represents another key investment into the regeneration of the City centre and the Devonshire Quarter and should be seen as making a positive contribution to the city as whole.

Planning & Design has a close connection with Sheffield, having long maintained an office in the city and with numerous clients and projects in the region. Currently based at The Workstation, Sheffield’s leading business centre for creative talent and innovation in the heart of the city’s thriving Cultural Industries Quarter, our Sheffield office is led by Michael Bamford. A chartered town planning consultant, Michael started with Planning & Design in 2015 and carved out his early career with the group. Having left the company in early 2018 to work with a National Consultancy based in Sheffield, he returned to Planning & Design last summer and takes the lead on the operation of our Sheffield Office.

Please contact Michael if you require assistance with planning applications, appeals or local plan representations or require advice on lawful development certificates or development appraisals, michael.bamford@planningdesign.co.uk or telephone 0114 788548.

The Planning System and Covid 19

25th March 2020 by Gary Stringer

Writing for the Architects Journal, Tom de Castella has set out how the planning system is just one of many parts of life in the UK struggling to keep operating with the partial shutdown caused by the coronavirus.

A number of local authorities, including Carlisle City Council, have already cancelled their planning committees. Many say they are continuing as normal, but this will undoubtedly change as the government gets tougher on social distancing.

In Glasgow, council meetings have been suspended, with the chief executive and senior officers taking over the decision-making process. A spokesperson for Leeds City Council said its chief planning officer would assess time-critical decisions anticipated over the next three months. In Aberdeen, planning development committees are one of the few committees to continue working and its meetings will take place as scheduled. Likewise in Cardiff, the planning department is ‘continuing as normal’ although all services will be reviewed in the light of new government guidelines, according to a council spokesperson.

The Architects Journal sets out the mixed responses from many different planning authorities across the UK. I am writing this at a desk at home, with all the Planning and Design team working from home until the crisis is over.

We ourselves spoke to twenty LPA’s on the 23rd March. All were continuing to operate a planning service, albeit many planners were working from home and all planning committees were suspended. For most, urgent decisions will continue to be made, through delegation or though consideration by chief officers and members of planning committees remotely. For example, some forms of prior notification have fixed time limits which if breached lead to an automatic permission. These will be decided by planning officers. Decisions on key development sites will either be put on hold or decided by officers and committee members working remotely. This may call into question the validity of decisions made on controversial sites because the objectors or supporters of a site or development will not have their say, so councillors will not be able to consider all the views that might otherwise be expressed.

By the end of this week we should be in a better position to understand how the system will operate as the restrictions continue to apply. I will provide all our readers with an update on individual councils once they have an agreed protocol moving forward.

Jonathan Jenkin, Managing Director, Planning & Design Practice Ltd

Why Sheffield floods… and how good planning can help

16th March 202016th March 2020 by Gary Stringer

Sheffield, owing to its geography and pattern of land use, is predisposed to flood from time to time.

Like Rome, it is famously built on hills, cradling 5 rivers (the Don, Sheaf, Rivelin, Loxley and Porter) as well as many smaller water courses, and is bordered by uplands on its western side.

During extreme rain events, water will run off quickly from the built over valley slopes. Many of the smaller watercourses have been constrained into culverts. The principal rivers have been hemmed into narrow channels, their natural flood plains concreted over. The neighbouring uplands would have once been covered with woodland, able to soak up rainfall, but are now used for grazing land or maintained as moorland for shooting game.

Much can doubtless be done at the local level to help mitigate the risk of flooding, dredging watercourses, building flood defences etc.

But if, over the longer term, the city wishes to address the underlying causes of flooding, a more radical approach to land use planning, which goes beyond the boundaries of the city’s administrative area, will probably be required. How we manage and farm our uplands, the extent to which we allow our flood plains to flood, whether we re-open culverted watercourses and give them space to breathe, the extent to which we prioritise tree planting, all of these things should be considered.

A balance must of course be struck. Many valuable heritage assets are situated on flood plains, many homes and businesses have to be safeguarded. But finding the right balance is what good planning is all about. The key is planning for the long term and planning across a wide area, beyond administrative boundaries. With good planning there is no reason why people cannot continue to live and work successfully in and around river valleys, as they have always done since time immemorial.

Jon Millhouse, Director, Planning & Design Practice Ltd

Top Image: Google Earth

Images: With thanks to Nik Hamilton at Invest Sheffield

Mitigating flood risk – Rain water management

11th March 202011th March 2020 by Gary Stringer

In a natural landscape, rain water is naturally absorbed and soaked into the ground, feeding water streams and rivers, supporting trees and vegetation as well as regulating ambient temperature by surface evaporation.

Construction and developments alter the water cycle, changing how, when and more importantly where our rain goes by increasing surface runoff and washing off pollution from our roads and hard surfaces. As the flow of water increases and drainage capacity is compromised, the risk of flooding is also higher. Permeable surfaces help to slow down water flow allowing watercourses to deal with excess water better decreasing the risk of flooding with the added benefit of proving better water quality to our watercourses.

Permeable surface can include:

Permeable paving
Rain gardens
Green roofs
Tree pits
Swales
Bio retention areas
Wet basins and Ponds
Dry basins
Wetlands
Underground water storage

Using permeable surfaces allow rainfall to soak into the ground, rills, channels and bio retention areas slow the flow, treat the water and store the rain. Vegetation also increases surface water runoff capture, providing biodiversity and ecology networks.

All of the above can be integrated into any project providing a great opportunity for the creation of great spaces for the community that are resilient and are able to adapt to a changing and challenging climate. A good example of this is the Strutts Centre and their Rain Garden retrofit project in Belper, which has no doubt helped to improve the local environment.

As we come to the spring and summer, if you are a keen gardener like me, you will be used to hearing about hosepipe bans and water restrictions in parts of the UK. A topic perhaps less discussed around here, is water demand in our developed environment. Just to bring an example from across the pond, in the western USA in years of normal rain fall, landscape irrigation can account for up to 43% of all residential water use, and perhaps closer to the UK, up to 26% in the wetter eastern USA.

Perhaps we all, architects, planners, designers, gardeners, citizens in general should open our eyes to a better water management approach from the outset on every project, however small they are and as simple and common as a new driveway.

Fernando Collado Lopez, Architect, Planning & Design

Top Images: With thanks to the Strutts Centre – Brick rain channel and linear rain garden in front of the old caretaker’s house.

RTPI launch Diversity Action Plan

2nd March 2020 by Gary Stringer

On Tuesday 25 February, the President of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Sue Manns launched a 10-year diversity action plan intended to make the planning profession more inclusive.

This follows the launch in January 2020, of the RTPI’s new Corporate Strategy 2020-2030 which sees Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity as one of four integrated Pillars.

Ms Manns, who became president on 22 January 2020, said “The RTPI is committed to working with members to continue to promote a diverse and inclusive profession at all levels”.

The RTPI commissioned specialist diversity and inclusion consultancy Brook Graham to look at how the planning profession currently performs and to identify a series of bespoke actions that could be taken forward to achieve this commitment. They found that whilst the RTPI performs ‘above average’ in terms of equality, diversity and inclusivity, when compared to others in the built environment sector, there is still much work to do.

Ms Manns launched the action plan ahead of delivering a lecture on equality, diversity and inclusivity at the University of Birmingham.

She said: “For us to be an effective and sustainable profession, we must be genuinely representative of the society in which we work. This includes recognising and addressing the need for broader visibility of diversity at all levels of the profession, from entry to the most senior. We need to be accessible and inclusive, adaptable to change and proactive in our support for members, wherever they may be.

“The action plan – CHANGE – has been developed to help guide both members and employers as they work to achieve a more balanced profession. This bespoke action plan represents the means for the profession to achieve this.

“I hope that CHANGE will be transformative and will not just benefit planners but will also positively impact on how people view the profession.”

Stuart Affleck, director of Brook Graham, said: “In a summary of research studies published in 2018, Deloitte stated that organisations with diverse and inclusive cultures are twice as likely to exceed financial targets, three times more likely to be high performing and six times more likely to be innovative.

“At Brook Graham we define diversity as all the ways in which we differ: age, gender, skin-colour and physical appearance as well as underlying, invisible differences such as thinking styles, nationality, values, education and sexuality. Inclusion is about creating a workplace where differences are authentically valued, where people feel involved, respected connected and where the richness of talents, ideas, backgrounds, perspectives and skills are harnessed to create business value.”

According to the RTPI’s UK Planning Profession 2019 study, membership is currently 61% male, 39% female and 6% BAME. Across planning schools and new entrants to the profession there is generally a 50:50 split between men and women. Student membership is growing rapidly, especially across BAME groups.

Park Hill: A Guide for the Future from Sheffield’s Proud Past

7th February 2020 by Gary Stringer

Sheffield Park Hill, where the Planning and Design Practice's Sheffield office is based

There are some buildings that come to encapsulate a city’s spirit. They become synonymous with the culture, identity and history of the space they inhabit. If one thinks of Liverpool, an image of the Liver building is almost invariably conjured in the mind. Newcastle’s maritime history is proudly on display in the very bricks and motor of the Baltic Flour Mill.

It is hard to think of a more striking urban image than the Park Hill Flats that tower above Sheffield’s train station. An instantly recognisable monument of 1960’s Brutalism, the flats represent an idealism in design that sought to provide working people with a good standard of living that had never been seen on that scale in the city before. The dream of streets in the sky with self-contained communities, with all their required services close at hand, guided the project that replaced the post-war slums. Of course we now know that history is not always kind to the idealists, and the breakdown of social cohesion that occurred during the turbulent 1980’s set the tone for the flats new imagine as a symbol of poverty and social isolation.

As one walks from the city to the train station today, you are met by a visual juxtaposition between the harsh and dilapidated old portion of the building, the vibrancy of the newly renovated element of the project, and the significant amount of scaffolding that indicates further works are well under way. The re-birth of this grade II listed building is especially relevant to the wider development context of Sheffield. The city is massively constrained due to its proximity with the Peak District National Park, Rotherham and the fact that large areas of the Authority’s jurisdiction designated as green belt. This means new development has got less and less space to inhabit. The regeneration of the Park Hill Flats offers a prime example of how the re-use of other characterful buildings in the city can be used to deliver bold architectural statements that meet the needs of today whilst paying homage to Sheffield’s rich heritage.

Rory Bradford, Planner, Planning & Design Practice Ltd

Multinational company invests £150m in Sheffield development

Improving tall building safety following Grenfell

Let’s talk about 3D printing and COVID 19

New student development planned for Sheffield

The Planning System and Covid 19

Why Sheffield floods… and how good planning can help

Mitigating flood risk – Rain water management

RTPI launch Diversity Action Plan

Park Hill: A Guide for the Future from Sheffield’s Proud Past

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