Yorkshire Sculpture Park #2

Just a few more pictures of a recent visit to Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Artists include Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro, Elizabeth Frink, Jonathan Borofski and Sophie Ryder.

The Localism Bill cometh...

I thought that the exciting news that the UK Governments new, “Decentralisation and Localism Bill” is only 2 sleeps away, was worth marking with a blog post.

I think it’s fair to say, that many within the planning profession have been rather alarmed by the Government’s approach to planning. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles (see above), has rather exemplified this; making a series of sweeping, cavalier statements about planning and previous systems, but rather failing to come up implementable policies or with details of how things will actually work (see the court ruling that he wasn’t allowed to scrap Regional Spatial Strategies, and the subsequent court ruling that he wasn’t allowed to say that this didn’t matter). Hence why, the new Bill and some much needed clarity, is so eagerly awaited.

Up until now, we’ve been mainly going on conjecture, and projections arising from of the Conservatives, “Open Source Planning – White Paper”, released prior to the election. We do know of course that regions are out, and that “Localism” is the new big thing (as an aside, I rather liked this assessment from Bentley, Bailey & Shutt, on this proposed move).

For someone currently studying planning, you’ll appreciate that this uncertainty makes things rather difficult. As we’ve not been able to have a lecture on how planning is currently meant to work, we’ve had some interesting class discussions instead.

The weekend papers carried a few nuggets of information about what the bill would actually contain: the big news, as reported here by Building Design, is that neighbourhoods will be allowed to take over powers from their local authority, and effectively make their own development plans. The overwhelming feeling was that this was absurd, frankly came as little surprise. However, I found the relief amongst the course members who are currently working in local authority planning offices, more interesting. Their worry appeared to be that the Government would simply widen permitted development rights, meaning that many public sector planners would lose their jobs. The consensus seemed to be that planners would have an enormous amount of work to do in coming years, initially giving advice to communities on making their plans, before having to stitch together a patchwork of different development plans, and finally to administer this incredibly complicated system. I find this potential increase in the bureaucracy of being a planner pretty depressing.

Having recently written a fairly lengthy essay on the history and theory of planning over the last 60 years; what I found most striking is how planners have generally moved away from a position where they are producing positive proposals for implementation, to a position where their role is more about regulating policy compliances. Despite recent attempts to reverse this trend (see the New Spatial Planning), I’m disappointed that the new legislation is likely to lead more planners regulating, rather than actually planning for development.

Incidentally Eric Pickles made a comment a few weeks back, about how planners needed to get back to making plans (I’m tempted to do a best of Pickles post at some point); that current policy appears to run contrary to this is rather characteristic of both Pickles and the current administration. Despite recent talk of empowering local communities, news arrived this week that Planning Aid, an organisation that gives free planning advice to individuals and communities, has had it’s funding taken away and their staff have been issued notices of potential redundancies. If this isn’t a contradiction, I really don’t know what is.

Amongst the gloom, there have been some positive comments on the localism approach, most notably by Amanda Baillieu (here) and Jonathan Glancey (here). Certainly, greater community participation is to be welcomed (although the complications of actually doing this would span many, many blog posts), but I’m yet to be convinced that the proposed changes will be any improvement on previous approaches. Roll on Thursday...

Edit: I gather that the Bill will now be published on Monday 13th December 2010. Honest.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park #1

I’ve been a little worried that my blog is rather dominated by me complaining about stuff I don’t like. So it’s nice to be able to write a blog post about something I thoroughly approve of. When I heard news of Yorkshire Sculpture Park being expanded, I thought it was worthy of a blog post (or 4):

http://www.ysp.co.uk/ysp-media/press-releases/yorkshire-sculpture-park-launches-ambitious-new-landscape-restoration-project

Yorkshire Sculpture Park (or YSP as it tends to style itself) is a contemporary sculpture park, set in over 500 acres of former parkland, close to Wakefield. It contains a mixture of permanent installations and seasonal exhibits, which are a ‘who’s who’s’ of modern sculpture. It’s a fascinating place that even seems to appeal to those who claim not to understand art! It’s so big and there’s so much of everything to see, that every visit seems to lead to explorations of new and undiscovered places. Bretton Hall, which sits in the middle of the park, is a crumbling pile that was once used as a teaching college, and is now being converted into a hotel. In addition to the art works, the grounds are littered with features and follies, once associated with the Hall. The grounds also contain a number of abandoned 70’s education buildings, which themselves make for interesting, but slightly surreal experiences as you make your way through the park.

The recent visitor centre and galleries, are all rather lovely and I can thoroughly recommend the restaurant. Best of all, it’s entirely free to get in, and there’s only a small charge for parking.

From a purely selfish perspective, I’d honestly prefer it people didn’t want to go there. I’ve been many times over the years, and even on an August Bank Holliday, the park has been blissfully quiet. However, it’s such a terrific place that I can only wish it every success.

Rather than overload my blog with hundreds of my pictures, I’ve decided to split my slightly random pictures over 4 posts. This one focussing on the visitor centre and Henry Moores, with a little bit of Andy Goldsworthy thrown in for good measure.