Member

Training of planning officers to understand the need for beauty in the built environment is therefore vital. I raise only one question—or one query or even one doubt—about it, which is that if you train planning officers just as you train architects to think about what the current view of beauty is, they will tend to end up with the same answer. We saw this dramatically and catastrophically after the Second World War in the major council developments and the major artistic developments—a depressing number of which are now listed, I have to say. We ended up with developments which were outrageous and scandalous but uniform across the country. In other words, training leads to groupthink, and it leads to groupthink in planners, in architects and in builders, who leap upon it because groupthink of ticky-tacky boxes leads to cheap developments. The training and the nature of it are crucial, but, having said that, I think this Amendment 99A is a very welcome first step.