Ensuring high quality development that is suitable for an existing place is an increasingly important part of the planning process. Whether its context needs to be respected or an opportunity to create a new sense of place exists, the inherent change brought by new development can be highly controversial, with a lack of consensus on the acceptability of change.
A balance needs to be struck when determining what would be appropriate for each place - whether to respect, reinforce or reinvent character - with the equally important need to make efficient use of land. Often, a more systematic explanation of scheme design quality, its relationship to context and the associated policy ‘tests’ is key in optimising site potential and can help to make a persuasive case, whether at application or appeal.
Framed by the requirements of design policy and guidance, Well-Placed, Lichfields’ Good Place Framework, provides a tailored and transparent, well-evidenced urban design assessment of the suitability of development proposals for their particular contexts, balancing subjective design matters in an objective way to assist decision makers and design teams. It can be applied to developments within ordinary or historic places.
Well-Placed has been developed by Lichfields’ townscape and urban design experts to provide clients with a considered, systematic policy-based assessment of design quality and the associated suitability of new places and buildings for their surroundings. It supports developers and their design teams, as well as under-resourced local planning officers, by clearly and coherently distilling and interpreting requirements of design policy and guidance at pre-application, application or appeal stages.
The Good Place framework provides decision makers with an independent assessment of the urban design and townscape merits of development proposals, masterplans or strategies. For the busy case officer, it offers an authoritative and persuasive ‘report ready’ review of a scheme’s placemaking credentials. Well-Placed seeks to reconcile the complex, and often competing, aspirations of design policy and guidance and in doing so optimises site potential and makes sense of what beauty and placemaking means in practical terms.
