14 - 08 - 2024
The Chatham Centre Design Code has been unanimously approved by Medway Council and is now an SPD document that will deliver more successful places and facilitate regeneration aligned to the community’s aspirations.
Overseen by Scott Adams, BPTW’s urban design team and the wider consultant team, including Create Streets, HTA Landscape, Urban Movement and Lyall Bills & Young Architects, the design code establishes detailed parameters to deliver high-quality and sustainable places for a low- to mid-rise centre in Chatham. Therefore contributing to a healthier, greener, more vibrant and thriving centre that celebrates the rich heritage of the area.
Medway was one of 25 places selected for MHCLG’s Pathfinder Programme and one of three Pathfinder design codes shared in the Office for Place’s Design Code Library, celebrating it as a precedent for other local authorities.
BPTW followed the three-stage National Model Design Code (NMDC) process to define a unique overall vision for the centre and enhancement of bespoke area types, or distinct parts, of the centre, “underpinned by the place-based aspirations of the council, which are defined very clearly and tangibly within the design code.” Duncan Bernsten, Urban Design Officer at Medway.
Collaborating with the Council’s preferred design review provider Design South East (DSE) the Chatham Centre Design Code is the first adopted design code enabling a considered design review process to facilitate ‘code breaking’. This pioneering process enables applicants to break certain design codes, for example related to height or massing, as long as the resulting proposals deliver exemplary design.
Informed by local character and strong community engagement, the Chatham Centre Design Code delivers a framework for more sustainable places and communities in the area to establish Chatham as a city centre by 2050.
Chatham Centre Design Code’s 2050 Vision Sketch
