Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): I am delighted that we are able to welcome back to the Committee Dr Stephen McCabe, policy and projects officer with Northern Ireland Environment Link, and Mr Pete Mullin, policy representative from the Landscape Institute. Thank you very much for making yourselves available today for our meeting. I invite you to make some short opening remarks before I open the meeting up for questions from the Committee.

Dr Stephen McCabe (Northern Ireland Environment Link): Thank you, Deputy Chairperson, for your welcome and for inviting us back again to provide some evidence to your inquiry. I will go over the ground that I covered last time.

The Northern Ireland Environment Link is the networking and forum body for non-statutory organisations concerned with the environment in Northern Ireland. Members represent a significant constituency in Northern Ireland and manage a large land area, delivering a variety of benefits to society. Members are involved in environmental issues of all types and at all levels from the local community to the global environment. Environment Link brings together a range of knowledge, experience and expertise that can be used to develop policy and practice in environmental issues.

With regard to the implementation of the Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) strategy, the simple but key point that we want to get across to you today is that there is a significant existing body of research that demonstrates that the environment is a key factor in building community cohesion. While there is no individual person or single organisation or discipline that has all the answers to complex social issues and problems, part of the solution to overcoming divided communities will be found in addressing environmental improvement. Well-designed and well-maintained shared green space in urban areas has been shown to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour, contributing to the establishment of more stable societies. As people feel more comfortable and perhaps have more pride in where they live, their confidence increases and they feel less threatened. Furthermore, better integration of land and transport planning naturally leads to better functioning places, and better functioning places means greater social inclusion.

One term that we want to raise today is that of green infrastructure. Green infrastructure essentially means using green and blue space — vegetation and water — to address social, environmental and economic issues. We suggest that shared natural space, green infrastructure and recognition of the services that flow to society from the environment, which are really true public goods, should be embedded in all public policy. There are great opportunities to do that through the regional development strategy, through the strategic planning policy statement for Northern Ireland, and through the implementation of the very good ideas that exist in the urban stewardship and design guide, 'Living Places'.

Research shows that shared space is more likely to be used if it is natural in character. Our natural and historic heritage has a potentially massive role to play in delivering T:BUC. Shared spaces are not just urban. We encourage communities to explore our shared spaces outside urban areas. We have beautiful shared spaces and shared built heritage in Northern Ireland, such as the Belfast hills, Mourne Mountains, our great beaches and the rich heritage of the Causeway coastline, to name a few examples. Those are all part of our shared heritage and should be promoted as shared space. The heritage perspective has a large role to play in overcoming division and giving a fresh perspective to the present.

Finally from me, Environment Link has been involved over the past few years in the administration of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) challenge fund. It is just one example, and I gave out books the last time that we were here covering challenge fund projects. It is just one example of how environmental projects can deliver much more than just environmental outcomes. They can deliver community benefits, including increased cohesion, and address cross-community issues, as can be seen in the early stages of the Suffolk interface pocket plots project. Another example of environmental management delivering shared space for communities is Ulster Wildlife's Bog Meadows reserve in west Belfast, which sees in excess of 40,000 visitors a year from across communities. There is potential for much more multiple-benefit work like that in Northern Ireland. I will pass over to Pete now.

Mr Pete Mullin (Landscape Institute): Thank you. Good afternoon. I am a chartered landscape architect and policy consultant for the Landscape Institute in Northern Ireland. First, thanks to the Committee for having us back again. I will try to keep this quite short. Stephen has already covered most of the key points that I would like to cover today, so I will simply concur and support the points that he has made.

In short, there is a growing body of evidence supporting what we all instinctively know, which is that quality environments have a direct and positive impact on people's quality of life. That does not simply mean that provision of well-finished accommodation, for example, will tick all the boxes. As you know, it is much more complex and multilayered. There is no single-fix solution to it.

Over the past four or five years, the Landscape Institute centrally has been very active in developing and advocating some of the core principles of our profession. That has resulted in a number of position papers, and I have issued a couple of those to the Committee. They include climate change, green infrastructure, housing, water and, most recently, public health and well-being. A number of threads run through all those papers, which focus on the fact that good design of the environment delivers multifunctional, tangible and, sometimes, intangible benefit.

You are probably familiar with the Barton and Grant settlement health map. I refer you to our position paper, 'Public Health and Landscape', when you get the opportunity to look at it. There is a simple colourful diagram, which places people at the centre of our settlement, and concentric rings that run out include the built environment and the natural environment. All those things influence people's well-being and health, and studies have shown that that is increasingly demonstrable.

Accommodating change is at the heart of our interest as professions. It is what we do, and it is what we expect. We expect change to take place in our environment, and it is something that we work with. We sometimes call it "material"; it includes working with time as a fourth dimension. That sounds very mysterious, but it is simply about understanding the process of a constantly changing environment. That does not mean that change should just be allowed to have free rein and be left to the open forces. We need to be able to identify what is worth protecting and managing and what could be better and to work with that. We need to manage expectations and to manage and guide change going forward. That is the foundation of our planning system. Planning is the result of allowing market forces to direct results.

We believe that T:BUC offers great opportunities and has great potential to support the delivery of better place-making and stewardship, which will, in turn, lead to more sustainable communities. As you will be aware, our organisation held a lunchtime conference, last month, here in the Long Gallery, kindly supported by the Committee. It was very successful, and the feedback has been very positive to date. For those who could not make it, we recorded the speakers and will put their speeches up on our website. In short, we had three speakers. Sylvia Gordon, chief executive of Groundwork NI, described how her organisation is working at interface areas with communities to deliver shared space and improve community relations in north Belfast and other parts of Belfast. We had Dr Milena Komarova, an academic from the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen's University, who described some useful and insightful research approaches. One of the key messages that struck me is that all parts of our cities and urban spaces are exposed to conflict and there is contested interest of all kinds in those spaces. In Northern Ireland, we also have the layer of an ethno-nationally divided city to deal with. We have this other elephant in the room, for want of a better description, that we must start to imbed into our policies for and approaches to the delivery of shared spaces. We also had, as a speaker, Neil Porter from Gustafson Porter. They have done a lot of work in Beirut, where they have had to deal with master planning a city that has been exposed to complex conflict and sectarian divide.

The simple message that came out of that conference was captured very well by one journalist, who said that, "Building relationships matter in urban planning". I will finish with the observation that in this context it is simple to focus on the relationship between local communities. That is key, but there is a myriad of other relationships that need to be built as well. We need to improve the structures and resources around funding and procurement, departmental silos and any blockages that can result in dampening aspirations for our public spaces. We have made some ground on that. DOE produced the 'Living Places — An Urban Stewardship and Design Guide for Northern Ireland' document, which some of you will be familiar with. There are some very good key messages coming out of that document, which now needs to take on a new life and start to be built into policy, but, incidentally, it does not mention T:BUC or the issues that T:BUC is trying to address. It is important that that is somehow built into policy going forward.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Thanks very much, gentlemen. You have put forward very persuasive points about the importance of the natural and built environment in shaping the united society that we want to see in Northern Ireland. You have prompted my first question with your reference to the fact that DOE's 'Living Places' document does not explicitly mention the Building a United Community strategy.

How well are the extremely important points that you raise reflected in the current Building a United Community strategy?

Mr Mullin: 'Living Places' does mention a number of key points. There is a section called "Bringing it Together", which, I think, gets close to what the theme of the inquiry is about. It has a number of key points. One is looking at the challenges. I will flash a picture up from that section of one of the peace walls, which is clearly one of the challenges, but it does not go into any great detail on how we deal with those challenges.

From a practical point of view — I have seen it in my professional practice — there are a great deal of positive approaches. When dealing with projects through DSD, communities or DOE, professionals and the communities are very keen to deliver and create quality shared space, but there are blockages to that. 'Living Places' is a very nice starting point. It is a good guidance document that sets the high level that we ought to be achieving, but it does not get into the technical side of things. That is where it falls down at this point in time. I think that there needs to be 'Living Places 2' with some kind of technical support to that. How do we deliver? If that is the aspiration, we now need to think about how we deliver that.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Building a United Community is similar in a way, because it makes the statement that all public space should be shared space, but I am not too sure how much detail it goes into as to how that is going to be delivered. I certainly do not recall any great reference to the level of detail that you have managed to outline in a short presentation today. Hopefully those will be important points for us to work into the issues that we will document further to the inquiry.

I will ask one other question before I bring in the members. You made some reference to projects such as the Connswater Community Greenway, for example, in my constituency of East Belfast. Are there learning points that could be drawn from that type of project for other projects in other areas of Northern Ireland?

Dr McCabe: It is very difficult to take something as good as the Connswater Community Greenway and just drop it in other places, but there are definitely lessons that we can learn there on the multiple benefits of having a space like that, not only for shared communities but in terms of transport, active travel and flood alleviation. It ticks so many boxes across different policy areas. Also, the way that it is funded, with input from lots of different Departments and bodies, is a good example for us going forward.

Mr Mullin: It is a good example. Probably the criticism, if there is a criticism, is that it responds to a natural system. It responds to the Connswater, which is where it comes from. It comes from the Castlereagh hills down to the foreshore. That is happenstance. That is where it is, so it does not pass through an interface area, for example. It is very much an east Belfast-based project. I think that there is some leverage towards the Short Strand, but not really anything physically connected.

It would be interesting, as a learning exercise, to try to apply the same principles of a green corridor, or what we call a piece of green infrastructure, through a series of more difficult and challenging interface areas. Alexandra Park is one that was discussed during our conference last month. It is also attached to a small watercourse, which is called the Mile Water and runs from the Belfast hills right down through several difficult interfaces to the foreshore. There is much disconnect physically and psychologically, so it would be interesting if some kind of project could be applied on that basis to see what the real results might be.

Mr D McIlveen: Thanks very much. I suppose that my question is following on the same theme. The Department and the First Minister and deputy First Minister in particular have been very enthusiastic about the concept of urban villages. A few urban villages have already been announced and tied in with the strategy, yet I noticed that there was no specific mention of that concept in the submissions that we have received from you. I am curious to know whether that was just an oversight or whether you have a particular opinion on urban villages. It would be interesting for us to hear what that might be.

Mr Mullin: To be honest, at the time of writing our submission, I was not tuned in to the urban village initiative. Having said that, I am still not entirely tuned in to the urban village initiative. I know that there is a high-level brief attached to that, but I am not personally familiar with the detail of what encapsulates an urban village. Is it bound by lines? Is it focused on a single point that radiates out? What defines an urban village? I have been making enquires to DSD about urban villages, actually in just the last couple of days. I would be very keen to understand where the gaps may be in what the initiative is trying to achieve. In principle, yes, urban villages have the potential to do what we want them to do, which is to reposition areas, but we would then need to see that that is not inward looking. It needs to be an outward-looking approach.

Mr D McIlveen: Thank you very much for that. I am sure that the Department will not be found wanting in trying to clarify that for you.

Last week, we had a regional meeting in my constituency, North Antrim. We had a fairly long, drawn-out conversation around that kind of point about whether putting people together crosses the line of social engineering. I wonder whether, from your point of view, looking at it from the environmental side, you see a sort of no-go line, which, if it were crossed over, would actually almost be counterproductive. Last week, I used the example of Unity Flats in Belfast, which is probably one of the biggest contradictions in terms that you will ever find. It was obviously built with the best of intentions, but it did not achieve what it was supposed to achieve. Where there are examples of bad practice in this regard, where, from your point of view, is the line not to cross?

Mr Mullin: A lot of good study has been done that shows that involving grass-roots communities and, again as you will be aware, children's groups and education is always a very positive way to make a change. I think that this comes back to the idea of what I mentioned earlier about time. There is no quick-fix solution to any of this. It will have to be something that we will grind out over a long period. Unless you put the seed in place and bring, for example, willing communities together, there will always continue to be blockages. I think that it would probably be to all our benefit if we were to identify ways in which to bring those communities together. We can lead the horse to water, but we cannot make it drink. We have to identify opportunities where we can get cross-community involvement, whether that be through a lot of good work that is done by Belfast Healthy Cities to create allotments and places for children to get involved in the environment, and working in that nature.

Dr McCabe: I agree with Pete that the physical environment and creating good spaces and places is sort of where we are coming from. I appreciate that there are other layers of complexity on top of that — absolutely. I would also endorse what Pete said about environmental education. That is a key area of potential for crossing communities and getting schoolkids doing things together in the environment.

Mr Mullin: There is an initiative in the rest of the UK called Learning through Landscapes. It is in England, Scotland and Wales. We do not have it here. It is very positive. It starts in schools. They do a lot of outdoor work with kids and learning from their environment. We do have some good work going on, but maybe we need to be more structured and organised about that.

Dr McCabe: I will just add one more thing to that. We have now reached 100% participation in the eco-schools programme in Northern Ireland. There is a great existing network there that we can tap into on these issues.

Mr D McIlveen: Finally, just to you, Stephen — I think that this will be a fairly short answer — you mentioned the issues of shared open space. I am particularly blessed to represent North Antrim, where we obviously have a lot of open space, which is certainly very much viewed upon as being open to everybody. There are no signs or emblems; nothing. You go there and it is just purely open. The natural beauty is there. However, in recent months, some of the open space around Belfast — at one site in particular, which I would say is probably known to you — has been used for the promotion of messages, which, at times, have been quite sectarian in nature. Presumably, you would discourage that type of abuse of the landscape.

Dr McCabe: One of the great things about the environment is that it is for everyone equally. That is my position on it.

Mr Mullin: I think that that applies to all space, whether it be a large open space or even a small urban space. There needs to be a movement towards, if you like, less branding of space and a repositioning of those areas.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): I have a couple of other members to bring in. Where do murals fit in to the consideration of these issues?

Mr Mullin: That is clearly at the heart of a lot of the problems. A thorny debate on that is currently ongoing. Generally, as designers, when we are brought in — I was talking to Stephen about this outside — we get very good at negotiating with people and talking about repositioning a new space. Where an opportunity arises for a piece of streetscape or urban design, you very much design with humans in mind, as opposed to any particular political attitude. You design it to create a nice space and a nice environment. I would be very surprised if there were any professional designers who did not take that approach to it. The difficulty is what happens afterwards. I have personal experience of working on a number of schemes where we did the handover and, the next thing, flags went up when the communities moved in. That is unhelpful because it very much sets out the use for that. If you like, the division becomes very prevalent there. There has to be a sea change in how we steward things going forward. We were in the habit of investing money in the creation of a space and then maybe putting aside a small budget for maintenance of it, but ownership finishes at that point. I think that that is where the idea of stewardship, which is in the title of the document, 'Living Places — An Urban Stewardship and Design Guide for Northern Ireland', comes in; that it has to be ongoing and repeated. You cannot just walk away from it and leave it.

Mrs Hale: Thank you for your presentation. You mentioned that the Landscape Institute is marking its fiftieth year as a profession, so congratulations. In that time, there has been a demise in your public sector membership. Why do you think that is? Have you made any representations to the shadow councils to inform them of your work? I speak specifically about Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council. I would like to put on record at this time the impressive renovation of Castle Gardens in Lisburn. As Stephen said earlier, it does indeed raise the historical and heritage environment of the city. I think that everybody has bought into that again. With regard to stewardship, there have not been any flags: the whole city has taken ownership of the gardens. The new councils, such as Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council, are coming in next month. Have you made representations to them about the work that you do?

Mr Mullin: Professionally, as the Landscape Institute, we have very much liked to hide under a bushel. We have not been very good at promoting the work that we do. As you say, it is 50 years this year. That actually coincides with the fiftieth-year celebration of Craigavon as a new town, when the first professionals came to Northern Ireland to help to deliver that project and the institute was set up.

It was an all-island institute, and we were the only landscape architects in the whole of Ireland. We tend not to promote our work in the way that we maybe ought to, and, in the last couple of years, we have been trying to change that. Since I was taken on for the secretariat of the institute in the last year, part of the work that I have been doing involves being its policy consultant. That is now a small paying role that is about putting a wee bit more concerted effort into the promotion and advocacy of what we do. We have a plan to approach the 11 new councils to try to build up our presence within them. It is about capacity building. You are quite right. I did a statistic recently, and I found that, in Scotland, something like 50% of the local authorities have a landscape architect and 90% have access to one to help to inform brief and with development plans and policy.

In Northern Ireland, it is 7% currently. That will probably change when we turn to 11 councils, as opposed to 26, but, at the moment, Belfast is the only local authority that has a landscape architect working in it. Actually, I think that Derry has one as well, but the rest of the country has not felt the need for landscape professionals. I think that the simple reason is that there is a perception that only Belfast and Derry have parks, therefore, it is only they that need landscape professionals. The reality of modern life and the modern environment is that there is pressure from wind turbines, infrastructure and economic regeneration. All councils will feel the effect of that. So, you need to have people who are professionally equipped to help you inform policy going forward. We are doing work on it, but we could do better.

Mrs Hale: Thank you. I hope to get some input on the transformation of the Lagan canal, which runs through Lisburn. I look forward to seeing your fingerprints over that work.

Dr McCabe: Absolutely. On behalf of the wider sector, we have been engaging, or will be engaging, with councillors on their new planning powers. We are producing a planning handbook, if you like, with Sustainable Northern Ireland, which tries to raise awareness of environmental and heritage assets in each council area. We will be distributing that through the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA).

Mr Maskey: If I get these questions right, I am going to swap seats with you. These are very difficult issues, and, for the Committee's inquiry, we are trying to work out who can help and what additional matters people can bring to the table. That is your last question. Do you want to discuss with us how your profession and the Landscape Institute can help to bring communities together? You have addressed a number of the issues, and Brenda mentioned the capacity of local government and the deficit, as you see it, of your profession being involved in the planning stages. I understand structurally how we can increase the number of your members in the various institutions, if it is thought necessary. I understand clearly the need to have a landscape strategy that would underpin strategic planning and design issues, and I also understand the need to get something into the curriculum and into education. I can picture all that and say, "Well, there is a gap. Let us see whether we can fill it". However, when you then talk about interfaces, the Bog Meadows, Custom House Square or a range of the other initiatives that have been identified, all of which are very good and very successful in their own way, how do we add value to that?

In most interface areas that you will know — you addressed some of them — it would not matter whether you were putting palm trees in, because people need the interface under the current circumstances that they feel they have to live within. The last thing that a lot of those communities want is to take that wall down. That is a sad reflection of the life that we live. If you went into a lot of people's houses and looked out at a wall, you would find that, unfortunately, they would rather have that, because they feel safer in their home. That is a shocking indictment on all of us. In the context of your presentation, we are trying to work out how we bring what you have to offer, which is your higher vision on the use of space. How do you introduce that into a conversation with people who are fearful of where they live and do not want to have anything done to the wall? Do you know what I mean? You cannot ignore the other. You have already identified a lot of initiatives through which parks have been built and initiatives have been taken. That is all very good, but how do we reach the place where we really need to make a difference to people's quality of life by bringing them together? As I said, it would not matter what you do with some of those walls, people want them there. We are trying to set ourselves a target for removing them, but when you talk to the people who live there, you find that they would rather have them than what they feel would be the insecurity of having them taken away.

What other conversations might you have those communities? You addressed the point that you have been involved in initiatives and that you went and negotiated with the community and got the murals down, but then, when you did that bit of work, you found that they went back up again. That is really only managing a situation. I am not saying that you are wrong to do that, because, ultimately, we all do it at times. I am just trying to work out what else your profession can bring other than good, high-quality landscape design and a high-level vision, which are all very important. How do we marry that with the need to get people to feel more comfortable with where they live, if you know what I mean? It is a tough question; I know that. I do not expect you to have you the answer, but I would expect you to take it away and think about it.

Mr Mullin: There clearly is no easy solution to it. We have members who are involved at a number of levels, and the conference that we had last month was quite interesting. It had, if you like, three tiers. I was involved in setting the thing up and deliberately chose three speakers. There was an academic to give an overview of cities in conflict, and we also had a master planner, who dealt with looking for connectivity and solutions through planning and urban design on a bigger scale. Sylvia from Groundwork was also there to deal with the on-the-ground aspects. It is one of those situations where it is not one issue or another; all those things have to come together. Unfortunately, this issue will be a case of small gains. I do not think that we are going to be able to make a wall disappear overnight; it is going to take time to look for ways to create breaks and apertures — almost a road through the peace wall, as opposed to removing it. We may have to look at ways that we can start to take it down a bit, narrow it a bit or shorten it so that we can gradually get people confident enough to think that it is OK. There will be a process, I think. It is not going to be a quick win; it will be a slow process. That is just my own thought.

When the walls eventually come down, we will have to think about what is beyond them and what it is that we are revealing. There are examples in the city of areas that have had antisocial sectarian behaviour, if you want to call it that, or antisocial behaviour — both are very similar when you see them expressed — where communities have now been rebuilt. I am thinking, for example, of the back of Clonard — I mentioned this before — where there is new social housing that is very much on the back of the interface wall. With the benefit of Google Earth nowadays, you can jump from one side of the street to the other, and when you look at it, you realise that it is just more housing. It is about trying to educate people and children about what is over the wall. They have the current perception that there is something big and scary beyond that large wall that they should not have contact with. The reality is that it is just another street.

So, I think that there is a whole slow process of trying to bring people backwards and forwards from that point.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): One of the young people at a recent event of ours asked whether walls could be see-through, which I never heard anybody ask before. I am not sure that it is as immediately dismissible as you might think. As the professional landscape architecture experts, you could have a think about that.

Mr Mullin: Increase the sales of Perspex.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): There could be a gradual revelation that the other side has similarities, rather than differences.

Mr Mullin: I will mention one small project that we are working on at the moment. I have secured a piece of the Berlin Wall for Northern Ireland, after contacting the senate in Berlin about it. During the process of pulling this response together and the conference, Berlin was celebrating 25 years since the wall came down. There was a map — I think it was in 'The Guardian' — showing pieces of the wall everywhere from Christchurch in New Zealand through to Canada. There was none in Ireland, so I thought, "Hold on a minute; there is an opportunity here to take something". Obviously, the reasoning behind the walls is politically very different, but the idea of division is the same. What can we possibly do with that? There might be a number of little spin-out projects that we can use that piece of wall to identify and that can shine a light on the problem. All those little things can help.

Mr Attwood: First, I agree with your point that there has to be opportunities for better understanding that unity when we appreciate the scale of our built, natural, archaeological and Christian heritage, which is in the common ownership of all our people. There must be some learning about and narrative on all that to open our minds beyond the more orthodox approach. I think that you indicated that earlier. Part of T:BUC should be not just about managing visible expressions of division but must have a narrative about our shared heritage and the wonder of it, celebrating it and drawing conclusions from it. T: BUC, which we think is quite a moderate start anyway, lacks that sense of grounding. Its idea of a united community already unites us, but we do not seem to acknowledge it in the way that we should.

Alex Maskey is right to ask how your institute and experience can inform building a united community at the hard end. It is only when you are on the ground working with communities that people begin to see other ways that a wall might look. The point is still valid, because at the far end of all that, unless there is confidence on both sides, it does not go anywhere. That is rightly so, because when people have their worst fears, you cannot just say that it will be all right on the night. That is just not credible. My first question, therefore, is whether you are you involved in any of that work on the walls with OFMDFM to look at the options and at how they can be made to look or feel different? They probably have to feel different before they look different, or before they are different and can all be taken down.

Mr Mullin: I am not involved in those projects. I know that some of our members are involved through DSD streetscape improvements in various parts of north and east Belfast. We have private practitioners involved in lots of these procured initiatives and master plan initiatives. As Brenda mentioned, we could benefit from more members being involved in brief setting within the city council. They can then deliver some of those strategies through the new development plans and local policies that will come forward. Yes, we have people involved once it has been recognised that a project is needed. It would be more helpful, however, if we had people involved in helping to set up those projects and to identify the potential.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Thank you very much indeed, gentlemen. I have found this very useful, and we will factor all this into our issues paper. I might also propose to the Committee that we write to the Department of the Environment to ask how the urban design guide, 'Living Places', will link with Together: Building a United Community and for some more information on how organisations would engage with the design process for urban villages.

Are there any other last issues of that nature that you would like to raise?

Dr McCabe: I will chime in a little on the heritage aspect. I know that NIEA will very shortly release its historic environment strategy. I think that there is a lot of scope there for T:BUC and that those strategies should speak to one another.

Mr Maskey: Is there any other information? You referred to other case studies and so on that you might have, but I do not see them in this pack. Can you maybe make it available to us at some point?

Mr Mullin: There was a series of papers, and we can recirculate them to anybody who did not receive them the last time. We need to find a mechanism to almost mark the success of T:BUC going forward. There are a number of sustainability markers out there. I am trying to say this without creating another tier of bureaucracy, because the last thing that anybody needs is another box to tick. There are a number of mechanisms such as the Building Research establishment environment Assessment Method (BReeAM), which is to do with creating sustainable design. BReeAM is applied to a lot of public-sector projects, including schools, hospitals and social housing. CeeQUAL is another one. It is more connected to civil work, streetscape work and town centre work. I wonder whether there is a mechanism whereby, as part of the tender procurement process, we have to deliver the results for economic benefit. If you are designing a town centre improvement scheme, you have to involve economists to determine what the net benefit is for every pound spent; for example, a £3 return for the investment of each pound. I wonder whether there is something in that mechanism that marks our success in bringing communities together. They could be things that we have done in a master plan process that are maybe more outward looking, looking at connections and at opportunities to avoid division physically. A good designer will do that as part of their process; they just need to set it out. That will give us a tangible way to mark the success of that programme.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Lyttle): Thanks very much indeed, gentlemen. We have a lot to go on there. Thank you for your contribution today. We hope to produce a report of the inquiry towards the end of this session, so we will be able to re-engage with you then.