In 2021, the UK government made beauty an explicit objective of the English planning system. The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, which received royal assent on October 26 2023, now requires local authorities to use design codes to deliver beauty in new developments.

Driving this emphasis on beauty (which is likely to be strengthened through further planned revisions to national planning policy) is a particularly knotty problem in England’s approach to housing. Everyone agrees that more housing is needed, but no one wants it to be built near them. The government’s hope – as the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, Michael Gove, has put it – is that “communities will welcome development when it is beautiful”.

English towns and cities do desperately need attention. A 2019 national audit by advocacy group Place Alliance found that, in terms of design quality, new housing developments are overwhelmingly mediocre or poor. Office buildings converted under permitted development rights into housing have been characterised by the campaign group Town and Country Planning Association as creating “slums of the future”.

Meanwhile, outstanding heritage assets are being harmed by insensitive new development. And under-resourced local authorities are in no position to help because they have so little design expertise.