Plans to to secure high-quality housing design for new homes in Mansfield

Attendees at the ninth part of an ongoing series of Developer Forums, hosted by Mansfield District Council, included Barratt Homes, who presented how to secure high-quality design from volume house builders.

Nottingham City Council then took the stage to present its design quality framework, followed by The Urban Design Doctor, who covered the ongoing Design Code work covering Mansfield’s town centre.

Michael Robinson, strategic director, said: “We’ve heard from Barratt Homes that they are improving the design for volume schemes around the country.

“We’ve also heard from Nottingham City Council and Stefan from The Urban Design Doctor, who is supporting our national pilot process within the town centre, where we’re looking to try to see if we can get some code defining behind our proposed schemes, particularly on our regeneration sites going forward.

“I think the fact that we regularly get a good core attendance shows how much the developers, the agents, and our other wider partners value the engagement with the district council.”

Martyn Saxton, head of Planning and Regeneration at the council, said: “A lot is happening in Mansfield, a lot of planning documents being produced and lots of regeneration work in progress – so it’s all positive news.

“We use these kinds of workshops to get developers in and get our message out to them that we want to get good design in the district and work with them. So it’s really about partnership working, making a positive message, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Following the meeting, there was a workshop for the Design Code where attendees shared their thoughts and ideas on how the town centre environment could be improved and how priority sites could be developed.

All the insights from this meeting and the public comments will now be used to create a first draft in readiness for the spring.

The council organises the Developer Forum events to look at upcoming planning legislation changes and to inform local partners and developers about future works taking place.