Hounslow Design Codes | Allies & Morrison

Project description

This Supplementary Planning Document enters uncharted territory as one of the first that consciously draws in the National Model Design Code, providing an innovative model for public sector procured design codes. We embraced the challenge of crafting guidance at different scales, from Borough-level to site-specific, striking a good balance between flexibility and prescriptiveness. Extensive engagement kept Hounslow’s diverse communities at the project’s heart, ensuring the ‘so what?’ was at the forefront of our thinking.

Hounslow Borough is full of distinctive places that together form a microcosm of London’s diversity. From historic tree-lined streets in Chiswick in the west of the borough, through to London’s busiest airport and major logistics operations at its western edge. It is, at the same time, a place of great affluence and desirability, and real adversity and challenge. Like all London Boroughs, Hounslow is experiencing challenges and opportunities presented by the Mayor’s good growth agenda – the drive to significantly increase the number of high quality homes and new jobs being delivered and to ensure this creates well-designed places that function well, are sustainable and that people want to and can afford to live and work in.

The 2014 Character Study recognised early on the crucial role that understanding character has in helping to manage growth. However, since 2014 there have been some key policy shifts and changes at multiple scales that necessitated an updated study to reflect these. This Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) explores Hounslow’s key characteristics – its rich heritage and cultural legacy, strategic road / rail routes, historic centres, its green spaces and waterways, typologies, its diversity of character and people and also the common threads that bring the Borough together, to set a strategy for context-led growth.  

Hounslow’s best assets are the bedrock for sustainable and inclusive growth. The purpose of the SPD is to guide new development that acknowledges and enhances local character, whilst identifying opportunities to transition to a greener, stronger, fairer Borough. The SPD updates the 2014 Character Study and provides and exploration of character and design guidance at various scales, articulating the fundamentals of good design that every neighbourhood in the Borough deserves. It is intended as a central hub of information to guide people – residents, community groups, developers and officers – on a process of understanding their context better, to inform planning applications and support confident decision-making. The overall vision is to raise design quality across the entire Borough, so that local people can live, work and thrive in sustainable, healthy, social and inspiring places.

We undertook a range of site visits and GIS mapping to provide an up-to-date snapshot of the Borough. We established Borough-wide design principles, drawing on Hounslow’s best assets and addressing inequalities, that help guide green and inclusive growth. A plan for the nature and focus on growth across the Borough was developed, using a ‘conserve – enhance – transform’ spectrum. The plan was supported by area-level visions and growth priorities, alongside urban greening and density design codes. Tailored neighbourhood-level design guidance provides necessary detail and prompts for development. Community input valuably fed into each stage. This included an online survey early on with over 750 responses and five public online workshops.

The SPD provides a central resource of information for the Borough, aimed at communities, officers and applicants alike to build in an understanding of context into their planning applications and decision-making. The Council is proactively using the final document to feed into the Hounslow Intensification Tool to support higher quality schemes. The work has directly led to our supporting of small and diverse practice working in the Borough such as Jas Bhalla Architects on the Kingsley Road masterplan. The knowledge developed has directly strengthened the Borough-wide Town Centre Visions and Masterplans project (and vice versa) and has resulted in subsequent initiatives commissioned by the Council including: Site Specific Design Codes, Public Realm Design Guidance, Community sites.