• Welcome to the site
• What is this project?
• The Partners
• The project process
• Key Public Dates

  Polls

this item published by Administrator Account on24/02/04

• CABE Library
• CABE Website
• Cherwell District Council
• Faculty of the Built Environment, UWE, Bristol
• Oxford City Council
• Oxfordshire County Council
• South Oxfordshire District Council
• Vale of the White Horse District Council
• West Oxfordshire District Council

facilitated by CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment - with the Faculty of the Built Environment, UWE, Bristol

The Project Programme

The UWE team aim to establish the existing situation in the County by carrying out the following investigative steps:

• Establishing a framework for quality

In conjunction with CABE colleagues and through a review of literature, the UWE team has developed a framework for design quality. This framework will provide the basis for the establishment of the current position of each authority in meeting the challenge to improve the design quality of the built environment.

• Design triumphs

Recognising that progress is already being made, one of the first tasks is to produce a bank of examples of good practice in achieving built environments that are of high quality design and that can be shared by all the members of the Partnership - hence the idea of 'design triumphs'. The constituent local authorities have been asked to record details of exemplary schemes in the County and make these examples available to colleagues in other authorities. In addition to these exemplary schemes the team are also interested in finding out about relatively small steps towards higher quality or, for example, where a policy, technique or procedure has led to an improvement in design as these ideas may have value elsewhere in the County.

• Partnership Website

The UWE team has produced this web site environment.uwe.ac.uk/OxDP for the exchange of information and ideas about the exemplary projects revealed by the research. Examples posted on the web will facilitate exchange of ideas between members of the Partnership. The website will also contain other information as the project develops and will be an important way of communicating.. As investigation stages are completed and approved by the partnership,the results will be made public on this website.

• Scoping seminars

The purpose of the Scoping seminars is to enable the members of the Partnership to exchange views about how the partnership should develop.

• Desk study and establishment of current position

This study will use the Framework for Design Quality as a basis for the investigation and will involve a document review and interviews with key members of staff as a means of establishing current practice and determining examples of good practice.

• Interviews with local planning authorities

The scoping seminar provided an opportunity for a relatively small group of senior staff and members of the respective Councils to express their views. The purpose of the follow up interviews and the questions that will appear on the web site is to broaden the opportunity for the UWE team to find out about the views of a wider group of local authority staff.

• Setting up the Forum

An important part of the project will be taking it through to the second and subsequent stages. The first stage will include consideration of how this will be done. The intention is that the second stage activities will emerge form the first stage of the research. It is probable that a formal launch event will take place at the end of the first stage to publicise the existence of the Partnership and set out its aims for the second stage of the project and beyond.

• External opinion

An important part of the process will be to view the activities taking place within the County from a number of different perspectives. Consequently, external opinions will be sought from organisations within the County that have a stake in the achievement of a higher quality built environment. This consultation will take place on 13th March 2004.

• Report and conclusions

A final report of the findings of stage 1 will be published at the end of the first stage. The report will contain recommendations for the stage 2 activities.

• Evaluation

A separate research team to be appointed by CABE will evaluate the partnership project. This will ensure that the lessons learnt from the project will be clearly stated so that any future scheme of its type will benefit from an independent assessment of the costs and benefits of the Partnership.