Better Court Buildings Action Plan
01 July 2002
"Better Public Buildings" Initiative
Background
In October 2000 the Prime Minister launched an initiative to improve the quality of public buildings and the spaces which they create under the title of "Better Public Buildings, a proud legacy for the future". In August 2001 he confirmed that the initiative was to continue. The principal is that good design should not only enhance the lives of those who work in or use public buildings, but that design excellence should enhance the wider environment, both physically in the immediate vicinity of the building and also in terms of sustainability.
The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) is charged with promoting good design in public sector building projects. The Court Service is keen to support this initiative, and has been taking positive steps since 1999 to enhance the design quality of its future court building schemes.
The Court Service will strive for architectural excellence in the new court buildings it commissions.
Unique problems of law courts
The Court Service has an ongoing requirement to commission or lease a variety of buildings, for tribunals, office administration, record storage and for courts themselves. Law courts, to a greater extent than almost any other building type, have a symbolic function in their architecture. Court buildings need to represent the concept of justice, equality before the law and the importance of the authority of law, whether the justice is between individual parties (civil justice) or between the Crown and individuals (criminal justice). However they must not be intimidating. The emphasis today is on the scales of justice rather than the sword of punishment. Court buildings need to be seen to be there and seen to be public, authoritative and important in society, whether an individual has reason to use them or not. Unlike our other buildings therefore, court buildings cannot be hidden away on an industrial estate or be anonymous suburban office buildings, nor can they be seen to be high security compounds or visually oppressive. These are not factors that can be easily written into a pure functional output brief for modern procurement methods.
The planning of law courts, with their intricate circulation systems for various groups of people who must never meet except in the courtroom itself, makes law courts one of the most complex building types in existence. Many centuries of experience have highlighted best practice in how to resolve these difficulties, but new aspects (such as new technology) lead to new problems and new solutions. Such complexity makes law courts a more difficult building type to design and procure than most. The solution usually lies in giving more detailed requirements than is often the case today, whilst keeping an open mind on solutions to the design problem.
Law courts are probably one of the most challenging building types to design for any architect. To make them into a great work of architecture requires the most talented of architects.
Progress to date
Design Quality Statement
The Department set out a vision that is contained in the LCD design quality statement. This statement was drafted with full support of CABE and now forms the basic framework for all design evaluation on major court buildings.
Links with CABE
The Court Service has worked with CABE, and its predecessor the RFAC, for many years. We now have a policy of using CABE enablers on all new major Court Service schemes, and actively encourage their use on magistrates’ court schemes, where we are not at present the direct clients.
Ministerial Design Champion
The Ministerial Design Champion for the Lord Chancellor’s Department and the Court Service sits on this high profile Ministerial committee to ensure architectural excellence is demanded from the highest level. Bernadette Kenny has taken on the Official Design Champion role at the Senior Civil Service level. It is expected that they will be personally involved in flagship schemes such as Exeter Combined Courts, Manchester Civil Justice Centre and East Anglia PPP.
Lord Chancellor’s Architectural Advisor
The chairman of CABE, Sir Stuart Lipton, was approached immediately following his appointment to recommend a Commissioner to be the Lord Chancellor’s Architectural Advisor. Ian Richie, a high profile international architectural practitioner, was appointed. He provides high level architectural design evaluation on major new court projects. His appointment has provided a very strong signal to the construction industry of LCD’s commitment to architectural excellence.
Experienced and enthusiastic staff
The Court Service has, since responsibility for construction projects was devolved to Departments, had an in-house architect to ensure high architectural standards. Both the current and previous architects have been keen to achieve the best design, through giving advice to designers and project clients. They have many years‘ experience at not only designing buildings of excellence themselves but also at advising Government Departments on how to achieve this. A key part of their role has been to enthuse internal and external clients about the possibilities and benefits of good architecture. Educating everyone to realise they do not have to accept inferior buildings ensures everyone feels confident to demand the best and reject the second rate.
Feedback from PPP schemes
The Court Service has been involved in Public Private Partnership (PPP) schemes and Private Developer Schemes (PDS) for over 5 years. Whilst these are now coming to fruition, the process has been painfully slow, with PDS being slightly the more smooth process. A lot has been learnt from these schemes. The principle is excellent but the process flawed. The next phase of such schemes will learn the following lessons:
Sites
There is often a conflict between the availability, the appropriateness of location, the usable size and the cost of sites. A better site can outweigh the best building if different tenderers use different sites. Unsuitable sites should be eliminated at an earlier stage by giving better guidance on what is viable.
Benchmarking of costs and quality
Benchmarking design quality is extremely difficult without a design exemplar, which rarely exists. Insisting on tenderers submitting examples of what they propose by way of quality of materials, workmanship and product design at the tender stage is the only really viable solution.
Excessive costs of tendering
The excessive tender and negotiation periods, the extensive abortive work for losing tenderers and the fear of Government Departments backing out of schemes all lead to excessive costs of tendering. Ultimately the client pays for this. It leaves tenderers having to ensure that their profits are high to cover the risk, and almost requires the tenderer to reduce quality on the proposal the longer the negotiations are protracted. Clear design requirements and clear contract documentation with tight deadlines are important to both sides.
Separating the PPP elements
PPP and Design and Build schemes consist of building design, project management, funding and sometimes facilities management. There are no organisations experienced and proficient in all these elements. This means that tenderers are consortia, each with a different bias. Inevitably, whichever aspect leads the consortium the other elements become a lesser known and therefore higher risk. Risk costs money and increases the cost of the funding; therefore by separating out the elements for parallel or consecutive negotiation the risk to the tenderer and the cost to the client are reduced.
Appropriate contracts for different building types
The requirements for office buildings, tribunals and records storage facilities can be much simpler and more open than for courts themselves. These particularly lend themselves to PPP and PDS. Briefs can be very output related. High standards of architecture however are still required, as appropriate to the specific building function.
Team-working between designer and client
PPP has tended to separate the designer from the client, making it difficult for the design team to know what the client wants and risking ending up, after excessive iterations of design, with a building that is still not quite what the client wanted. For the benefit of both tenderers and client, there needs to be a closer working relationship between designer and client to speed up the procurement process and achieve a better solution sooner. Design workshops have proved a good way of achieving this.
Appreciating the worth of historic buildings
A great many existing court buildings have historic value and whilst the support facilities may leave something to be desired, the courtrooms themselves are often very popular amongst the Judiciary and Magistrates. The locations in town centres and their almost invariable civic quality are something that is very much sought in modern court complexes. In terms of environmental sustainability there is nothing better than retaining a building that has been there for many decades if not centuries. The natural ventilation and lighting required in modern courts is something usually already present in historic courts. For these reasons the first choice should always be to reuse existing buildings wherever possible. Unfortunately, larger complexes of courts are known to be more efficient than many small old buildings, and the space required for modern ancillary functions and separate circulation is rarely present in old buildings. The solution would appear to be to enlarge the best old court buildings by adding more courtrooms and more support spaces. This usually requires the acquisition of additional buildings or land, which developers are skilled at. To make better use of existing buildings in the past, new courtrooms have often been squeezed into spare space. There is often a good argument for adding complete new groups of courtrooms so that existing space can be stripped out back to its historic structure and better used for ancillary functions and a more rational layout achieved, often by returning to and extending the original planning logic. A combination of historic conservation and modern design has the potential to create architectural excellence in the hands of a talented designer.
Our commitments to action to improve design quality
To ensure that court buildings lead the way in improving the quality of public civic architecture we will:
Further strengthen design weighting in the tender process
We already often use an 80:20 split between quality and cost on tender assessments, but much of the quality score has been taken up with the quality of the documentation and the administration. In future the quality of the building being offered will dominate the assessment.
Use CABE enablers
We will use CABE enablers at the earliest possible stages on all new major court building projects commissioned by the Court Service, and strongly encourage their use on Magistrates’ Court schemes where we are not at present the direct client.
Improve design assessment guidance for assessors
We will publish guidance and give training on design evaluation for non-professional assessors, particularly clients, procurement staff and building users. We will work with CABE and OGC to develop training modules in design appreciation for assessors. We will develop the use of Design Quality Indicators to help assess the merits of designs and completed buildings.
Encourage the best designers to become involved in civic buildings
The only way to get excellent architecture is to use excellent architects. The complexity of court planning requires considerable skill. To turn this complexity into high quality architecture, particularly with difficult sites and historic buildings, can only be achieved by the most talented of architects. Public buildings, including courts have not been the most fashionable or cutting–edge field in which talented designers have wanted to work in recent years. We will encourage the best, most talented and award winning architects to work for us, and develop a strategy to achieve this.
Make greater use of CABE/RIBA supported design competitions and competitive interviews when appropriate
Design competitions are one way of separating out the elements of PPP and ensuring the client receives the design quality required whilst avoiding abortive work on project management and funding at the early stages. Both design competitions and competitive interviews of architects are a good way of ensuring that the designer is able to cope with the design challenge. Design competitions are also a good way of indicating to the developers that you rate design excellence very highly. We will use design competitions where appropriate.
Enable designers to have a key input to the nature and detail of PPP contracts
The Departmental Architect will be a standing member of the Court Service PPP Steering Group.
Clarify the separation of design, funding and project management in PPP
To help reduce risk and speed up the procurement process, we will separate out more clearly the key elements of PPP and focus effort where it achieves the most useful results to all parties, enabling design to be treated equally to the other key aspects.
Publish design advice for clients initiating schemes
Magistrates’ courts are currently commissioned by committees of magistrates who will rarely have commissioned a building before. Other courts (and in future Magistrates courts too, under the Auld Report recommendations) are commissioned by CS staff whose professional skills rarely include architectural qualifications. We will publish helpful advice to enable these clients to know what to ask for in a building, and to know what is possible and what they ought to demand.
Improve the selection of sites and development of planning briefs
We will consider the architectural potential of a site as well as its physical practicality when selecting sites. This is in addition to such factors as cost, convenience and location. We will also improve planning briefs, particularly using conservation briefs where there are existing historic buildings, and highlight the potential and restrictions of a site.
Publish illustrated advice on best practice in court design
Due to our own historic restrictions on photography in courts, and security concerns, very few court buildings have been widely published, particularly with regard to interiors and plans. The bulk of published articles in the professional press are 20 – 30 years old. There is no published book on court design. This makes it very difficult for both designers and clients to see the best (or worst) of what has been done before. We will publish a fully illustrated book on the design and architecture of law courts. It will be available to the public and will include the best examples of modern court design from around the world together with the principles of modern court design. The book will be integrated with the internal Court Service Design Guide. We will also encourage the publication of a study of historic court buildings.
Update Design Guides
The existing design guides for Crown, County and Magistrates’ courts were not written for current procurement methods and in some aspects are less helpful than they might be in giving the basic design information to designers. Information on tribunals, offices and combined justice centres is particularly thin. We will continue to regularly update the Court Service Design Guide and focus it on the needs of modern methods of procurement as they apply to Court Service buildings.
Move the balance of design effort from function to architectural quality
By giving better, clearer and more concise advice to designers and developers we will enable the designers to achieve the functional aspects of the building more easily. This will enable them to concentrate on turning a functional building into high quality architecture, which is our requirement.