Lord Rogers hits out at 'endless' planning delays » Communities » 24dash.com

Delays caused by the planning decision-making process in Britain came under fire today by leading architect Lord Rogers of Riverside.

Richard Rogers, considered one of the foremost living architects, was knighted in 1991 and made a life peer in 1996.

He told the Lords: "It takes at least 15 years and strong leadership for urban visions to become urban realities. In Britain, every policy is watered down through negotiation with countless agencies and every proposal bogged down in endless processes.

"The first planes landed and took off from Heathrow's new Terminal Five today. When my firm started to design this building, I was a much younger man. It was 19 years ago. We have to speed up the decision-making."

The new £4.3 billion showcase terminal suffered a disastrous opening day, with flights cancelled, luggage delayed and long queues.

Lord Rogers is best known for such pioneering buildings as the Lloyd's headquarters in the City of London, the Millennium Dome at Greenwich, and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

He is chief adviser on architecture and urbanism to the Mayor of London, and was recently appointed chairman of the Greater London Authority's Design for London Advisory Group.

In a debate on architecture, Lord Rogers said: "Ten years after John Prescott asked me to lead the Urban Task Force to assess how we could turn round our failing towns and cities there is much to celebrate.

"This is the first Government that has actually encouraged people back to cities, setting clear targets for developing brownfield land and reversing depopulation.

"It is also the first Government since the early 1940s that has set out a vision for sustainable long-term change in our cities. There has been success in creating new agencies and new devolved government.

"Ken Livingstone has established a dedicated design team under my leadership and cities throughout the world now look to London. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment has been a major success, creating a force for expertise, design review and helping create better buildings, towns and cities across England.

"There is something wrong however when nine years after the Urban Task Force published its report we still have no examples of regenerated neighbourhoods and cities in the UK to compare with the best in the world.

"There is something wrong when the Thames Gateway - Europe's major urban regeneration project - is still peppering the banks of the beautiful River Thames with shoddy, toy-town houses and Dan Dare glass towers.

"There is also something seriously wrong when new houses across the country form rootless estates and could just as well be in Beijing, Buenos Aires or Belfast.

"These are developments which have no regard for a community's sense of place, belonging or identity. I fear we are building the slums of tomorrow but it shouldn't be. Britain has some of the best architects in the world.

"The answer is simple. We have sidelined the talents that we have and, in what should be a golden age of British architecture, our output is simply lacklustre."

Lord Rogers said: "Trained architects should be placed at the heart of decision-making and all planning should have access to advice from skilled architects and vice versa.

"We should clarify, simplify and reduce the number of delivery bodies.
The Thames Gateway, for example, has over 30 authorities and partnerships involved. We should move towards establishing single-purpose, area-based delivery bodies.

"Local authorities must be empowered to lead the urban renaissance. The Government has gone a long way towards doing that. Now it needs to give our towns and cities the tools to finish the job.

"Unless we empower and enable our civic leaders to created beautiful cities, we will not just repeat our past mistakes but will condemn our children to live with them and in them."

For Tories, Lord Dixon-Smith said: "Most of the great buildings we long to preserve were constructed without the benefit of any planning system whatsoever.

"I often find myself wondering what the modern conservation societies would have had to say if they had seen the plans for St Paul's Cathedral from Sir Christopher Wren before it was built.

"They would have said it was 'not in the British tradition', 'out of character' and - perish the thought - 'Popish'.

"We need to remember that progress sometimes is not the way we perceive it immediately today. Our successors may well judge things very differently, though that is not to say we should not be making every effort to get design improved."

Replying to the debate, junior communities minister Baroness Andrews conceded that there had been "failures" in the creation of housing estates but added: "Things have changed since 2004 and there has been a cultural change in the culture of planning. We are living in a golden age of opportunity.

"The message is very clear. No more monolithic housing estates. We want well-designed, diverse, mixed housing for people who may live and work at home in the future."

She told Lord Rogers: "The Thames Gateway is not seen as an empty brownfield site. It is has a wonderfully diverse history and by bringing in CABE and setting design targets we are in with a chance of making a very good site there."

The debate ended without a vote.