Planning and Urban Design Consultants Urban Initiatives were commissioned by Harlow Renaissance to produce the Harlow Design Guide. The purpose of the guidance is to set out design principles to guide future development in Harlow and to encourage a design-led approach to development.
The Design Guide was adopted by Harlow Council in March 2011 as a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD). It supports the saved policies in the adopted Replacement Harlow Local Plan (2006), and will provide greater detail to support policy contained in Harlow’s emerging LDF Development Plan Documents.
The challenge in preparing the Design Guide was to understand and learn from what works best in Harlow, to help shape future change whilst remaining true to the distinctive features that give the town and its neighbourhoods their sense of place.
The Design Guide was assembled through a series of stakeholder workshops; people who best understand the challenges facing Harlow were involved from the start of the process and helped to generate the guidance contained within the document.
Gibberd’s original objectives for Harlow were to house people in genuine communities with good services and access to a range of amenities, and to incorporate high quality design whilst protecting and enhancing environmental quality.
The Harlow Design Guide aims to ensure that the positive elements of Gibberd’s New Town vision and local distinctiveness are retailed, whilst promoting appropriate contemporary urban design and securing sustainable development.
The Design Guide aims to provide general guidance on the form that new development should take, and looks to:
- Set out key planning and urban design principles and criteria for future development in Harlow;
- Encourage a design-led approach to development;
- Set out how development can be carried out, with a view to retaining local distinctiveness; and
- Assist applicants by setting out basic design principles.
The intention is that the Design Guide will inform:
- Developers, in considering potential development sites;
- Architects, in designing schemes for development;
- Development Control Officers, as a material consideration in assessing the appropriateness of planning applications; and
- The Council, in determining planning applications.
It is hoped that the Design Guide will inspire designers to rise to the challenge of better design in Harlow; it sets a challenge to developers and their designers to produce something better than the current norm. Over time, it is hoped that the guide will help restore Harlow’s historic reputation for high quality, contemporary architecture and design, by improving design standards and influencing the quality of development in Harlow. The test of whether the Design Guide is successful will be in the quality of development that comes forward in Harlow.