Practical application of codes in decision-making A design code supports development management officers in dealing with design matters during the determination of planning applications. A code that communicates policy positions unambiguously and is easy to use will help development management officers to apply policy consistently. As a consequence, it will facilitate and speed up negotiations and decision-making. Another benefit of a code’s clarity (in comparison to design guides) is that it reduces dependence on the judgement of DM officers. This allows senior colleagues to be more efficient with their time and makes it easier for junior officers to develop the confidence to justify their decisions. Lake District National Park Authority development management officers are already using their design code regularly in compiling reports and in negotiations with applicants, both at pre-app and at the application stage. Applications have been withdrawn and resubmitted as a result. Reasons for refusals not only referred to their code, but also back to policy. This emphasises the value of unambiguous policy hooks as they make it easier for officers to track back to the parent policy from the design code. As the Lake District team said: “The policy hook still is what the development management team use to
justify their decisions. But the design code provides further detailed guidance about what that policy wording means”. Adopting a new code allows you to “draw a line in the sand”, as Gedling Borough Council put it, marking a boundary between decisions made up to that point and all that follow. This is particularly useful in areas of poor quality or bland development. Adopting a design code allows you to apply new, higher standards, regardless of what was permitted before. This will only work if applications comply with the design code. How easy it is for development management officers to make this assessment depends on the scope of the code, and to what extent the design code is expressed as unambiguous, binary rules. You can best define your code’s scope by engaging with development management officers and cross-collaborating with stakeholders. While this produces good insights, not all of them will be directly relevant to your code, with the risk that you widen the scope and lose sight of your core objectives. If this happens, implementing your code is likely to be more difficult. As a general rule, the narrower your code’s scope, the more likely that the code’s requirements can be expressed in unambiguous rules. At Gedling Borough Council, for example, the code’s objectives were not only clearly aligned to three of the local authority’s corporate priorities – ‘Characterful Gedling’,
A code that communicates policy positions unambiguously and is easy to use will help development management officers to apply policy consistently. 40
Laying the groundwork: Ensuring effective design code implementation