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The Value of Good Design

Orchard Gate, Ditton - image courtesy of Millwood Designer Homes Limited

Good design improves people’s lives both now and in the future. It needs to be considered at every stage of the development process from the very beginning.

Well- designed places:

  • enable and support healthy lifestyles for everyone
  • enable easy movement and help people make more sustainable choices 
  • help mitigate climate change and can be adapted to a changing world 
  • treat biodiversity and landscape sensitively
  • enhance local identity, fostering a sense of pride, inclusion and belonging 
  • helps create strong, cohesive communities where people feel safe  
  • support a high quality of life for everyone 
  • attract inward investment and help businesses thrive

 

In Kent, we want to see vibrant, valued and economically dynamic places where people enjoy living, working and visiting. If you want to build in Kent, you need to demonstrate that you’ve considered all the factors above, and that your plan improves and enhances what already exists. 

This Guide sets out what good design looks like in Kent. It makes clear what we’re expecting to see in your proposals, the vision we want you to aspire to, and steps you can take to help us make your plans a reality.  

Kent in context

Kent is fortunate to have many existing examples of well-designed places which have stood the test of time. Historic town centres such as Faversham and Deal are still much loved and widely used centuries after they were first laid out. But good design can’t just be part of our county’s history: it’s fundamental to our future.

Increased growth pressure is reflected in the wide range of development now occurring across the county. New communities are being created on disused industrial and military sites, such as those in and around Ebbsfleet; elsewhere, new suburban areas are extending across former golf courses or airports. Garden villages and towns are being built or proposed in places such as Otterpool Park near Folkestone, and Aylesham between Canterbury and Dover.

Good design allows us to meet the challenges of this growth and capitalise on the opportunities it brings. We need good design everywhere, whether you’re building a small cluster of new homes in the Kent Downs Areas of Oustanding Natural Beauty (AONB) or developing an urban infill site in one of our more heavily-populated centres like Maidstone or Gillingham. 

Protecting our natural heritage

Kent has a unique and diverse landscape, with a wide range of habitats and ecology that must be preserved and enhanced. Good design is essential to protect our ecology and meet our commitments to net-zero carbon emissions. We want to see designs that both build on existing good practice and incorporate innovative design approaches, materials and technologies.  It seems a relatively short leap towards incorporating basic yet valuable materials  to the communities you are building that will assist local bio-diversity, for example.

Design Affects Everything

How places in Kent are designed affects everything from how sustainable and prosperous they are to how they help mitigate and adapt to climate change and promote people’s health. These are important challenges that all parts of Kent will face in the coming years, especially given the considerable predicted growth in the county. Many places are already successfully tackling these issues: through this Guide, we aim to ensure all new development lives up to the high standards we want to see.  

Designing for a changing climate

Design will become ever more important in helping Kent adapt to and mitigate its changing climate. To gain approval, you’ll have to demonstrate that your homes, workplaces and communities will be resilient, resource efficient and useable for generations to come. We want to see design that helps mitigate flood risk and overheating in buildings,  using  natural  means wherever possible. Your design should also reduce carbon emissions and manage resources including rain, energy and materials effectively. 

Designing with and for people

Everyone in Kent has a role in deciding how our new places and spaces are designed and managed. Your proposals will therefore need to show how you’ve involved the community, businesses and other stakeholders in your design process, and taken the differing needs of our diverse county into account.

 

Towards Net Zero

To help Kent achieve net-zero carbon targets, we’ve drawn up five key principles of sustainable and resilient design. We expect to see these applied in your design proposals at every stage from planning to demolition.