In April 2011 Integreat Plus was established as a social enterprise company as it transitioned out of Yorkshire Forward with the express aim of sustaining the legacy and underlying principles of Integreat Yorkshire, the RDA’s Regional Centre for Regeneration, Renaissance and Place Making Skills and Yorkshire Forward’s well respected Renaissance programme.
Our first 8 months have focused on setting up the social business, gathering the team.creating a new web site, brand and re energising core activity especially around sustaining the skills agenda through the Regen Academy in Bradford and keeping our Yorkshire Design Review Service going to ensure Design Quality is valued even with in our flat lining economy. We have done this with great support from the Design Council Cabe and the HCA. It is very relevant that the NPPF and the Bishop Review advocates the value of ’independent and impartial design review’ which points to more activity for us and other local panels in the next 12 months.
Design Review is working and achieving quality outcomes for our cities, rural communities and private developers. We have worked alongside many Local Authorities, including Bradford, Hull, Scarborough, NE Lincolnshire, Kirklees, Rotherham, Calderdale et al to provide independent and impartial design advice for hard pressed Planning Authorities who have lost key design professionals, and with them, longstanding experience and knowledge often gained over decades, and are unlikely to regain this capacity. To gain better insight into what our Local authority colleagues require we have met with all 22. New services are being shaped for early next year. One such response was Planning Committee member training which started in October supporting Leeds and Bradford and this work continues. This first module included design awareness and understanding, the latest research on the connection between quality place-making and improved economies, current planning hot topics and a real mock design review panel workshop, where elected members acted as design panel members on an real ‘live’ project.
We are developing our work to enhance the skills and knowledge of planners to deal with climate change mitigation and adaptation and encourage communities to take positive action on climate change. Local Government Yorkshire and Humber (LGYH) and Hambleton District Council have appointed Integreat Plus to recruit and manage the Planning and Climate Change Review panel as part of an emerging technical support service for the region.
This means assembling a high calibre, independent, multidisciplinary built environment, energy and sustainability expert panel, including architects, landscape architects, planners, transport, surveyors, housing developers, low carbon technologists, urbanists, civil engineers, building surveyors, energy renewable specialists, chartered surveyors et al able to deliver exceptional and cutting edge low Carbon support and advice for Yorkshire’s planning authorities.
We continue to be a Yorkshire wide service that gives communities, businesses, regeneration and place making professionals support, skills and confidence to lead and contribute to place based solutions including design and neighbourhood planning that engages with and benefits local people and businesses. The result,we believe,is better collaboration between communities, business and professionals and more intelligent, dynamic and economically sustainable places.
Supporting communities is a growing part of our work and builds on Renaissance programme legacy and we will be supporting a number of Town Teams to develop their place making and design expertise.
The big regional structural changes still continue. The fall out and pain from the deficit reductions are still being managed, Yorkshire Forward finally closes in March 2012, the incremental growth of the LEP’s, re introduction of enterprise zones, the Localism Act, Planning reforms and controversy over the NPPF and the latest and potentially the most exciting the prospect of core cities including Sheffield and Leeds being empowered by the Coalition to drive forward growth and take ownership of more resources locally. It all means the next 2012 will be massively challenging and exciting…..
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