Empowering strategic urban design through smarter systems

Beth took up a placement as Senior Urban Design Officer at Lewisham Council in London in 2022. With almost a decade of architectural and urban design experience behind her, Beth brought a wealth of expertise to the Lewisham team.

Her story in-post highlights how fresh thinking around urban design systems and processes can drive major efficiencies in local teams. In turn, this unlocks other – underused – capacities within the team, allowing them to focus their energies on strategic issues.

As an architect in private practice, Beth had worked on a tremendous variety of projects in the UK and South Africa. But she wanted to create meaningful change at scale, designing projects that would have a positive impact for a wider public.

Beth was matched with a role as a Senior Urban Design Officer at the London Borough of Lewisham in October 2022. At that time, according to Beth’s line manager, David Syme, the borough was facing some significant issues. The strategic planning team was under-resourced and overstretched during the pandemic years – and the need to fill open vacancies as the service emerged from COVID-19 was pressing.

Lewisham takes an ambitious approach to design quality, seeing it as a public good, and part of the Strategic Planning Team’s role is to support planners in understanding and applying these standards – a difficult ask with an under-strength team. As David describes it, the department

“had to rapidly increase its design and conservation capacity in a context across London when demand for officers was high and supply low. Public Practice offered us a compelling solution.”

The Lewisham team were already very familiar with Public Practice, having taken on a number of Associates in previous cohorts – with very positive results, so Beth’s skills and presence were a welcome boost to the team at this critical moment.

Beth’s work in Lewisham spans both design consultation and strategic research. In her first months, she streamlined the process for providing design feedback through training and empowering officers to make planning decisions independently. Beth set up a ‘design surgery’ – an informal forum where planners could discuss cases collaboratively rather than relying solely on formal written comments – as well as formalising standard conditions and creating templates for consistent and efficient outputs.

The result was more efficient processes that saved officers time, sped up the flow of development management cases, and improved decision-making, without sacrificing quality. This helped shift the balance of work in the right direction: away from small issues taking up disproportionate time, and towards strategic thinking, research and planning.

Beth has played a key role in securing funding for projects that will transform the public realm, including a major initiative to naturalise a local river and create a new urban park. Working across departments, she has helped shape town centre regeneration strategies, leveraging partnerships and funding opportunities that extend beyond traditional planning services.

Both Beth and David spoke about the tangible benefits of the growing Public Practice network. For Beth, the ability to call on a group of enthusiastic and like-minded peers across the country, whether they are Associates or Alums, was hugely valuable.

“It would have been much more challenging without that network. We share resources. Often another council has already done what we’re doing and there’s no need to trailblaze. A short message out to the Alum network and you might find there’s already extensive knowledge or documentation to help you out. It’s saved us hours and hours.”

With her skills and insight, Beth is proving that architecture and strategic planning can be tools for meaningful, lasting change.