When to come to The D esign R eview Panel It is best to bring your project to The Design Review Panel as early as possible. That way you can derive maximum benefit from the suggestions on offer before your designs become too advanced. Obviously some designing needs to have happened before we can review it, but design teams have sometimes come to us to discuss a brief and some very early concept sketches (RIBA stage 1) and gained a lot from the process. For these very early reviews the discussion focused on establishing design principles and objectives and exploring a range of design options. Most design teams come to us when the first draft of their proposals have been complete (RIBA stage 2) but before they have done so much detailed work that it is difficult to make changes. Many projects come to us once public consultation and discussions with key statutory consultees have been completed. This is not ideal as aspects of the design can become fixed as a result of these consultations. We suggest it is best to come for your first design review before, or around the same time as these early discussions. This is not to say that design review is not useful at a later stage – shortly before or after a planning submission. If you retain an open mind about making revisions to your application to address the Panel’s comments, design review can still improve the project and help it through planning. You should not feel that you need to make extensive preparations for a design review panel session or that you need to postpone a design review because you are not ready. We want to see your work in progress and you can certainly carry on working while waiting for the design review meeting. “As far as I can see there are only benefits to the Design Review system. As a designer/applicant you get the expert and unbiased opinions of respected colleagues, which helps to crystallise thinking and generally to improve the project ... ... Client’s benefit from a less adversarial system of discussing the very tricky issue of design quality with the local authority, and the Local Authorities benefit from having expert designers to help them in this very subjective area where they rarely have any in house expertise.” - Christopher MacKenzie RIBA, Director, Designscape Architects
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