Shaun Spiers opened the event by reflecting on the fact that 90 years ago the inaugural meeting of the Campaign to Protect Rural England was in the very same building – the RIBA HQ. When CPRE was formed one of its core purposes was to prevent the ‘haphazard aggregation’ of housing which was evolving. This was epitomised by places such as Peacehaven, one of the towns involved in the Making Places project, which was developed as part of a ‘competition’ by Charles Neville in 1916. He commented that ‘We must all take developers, landowners and others to task as to why they won't engage with local people.’

Louise Beaton from the Aldingbourne Neighbourhood Forum spoke about their experiences in creating a Neighbourhood Plan. She highlighted the need to clamp down on the loopholes in the planning system that developers use to enable speculative development and the lack of a clear link between landscape and biodiversity within the national planning framework and Neighbourhood Plan process.

Will Anderson from Rabble Place described the process for Making Places, including how workshops were structured to enable communities to consider the ‘character’ of the area where they lived. Some key themes came out of the process; what works well in a settlement is often overlooked when new development is planned, variation and the quality and integrity of design are critical and the lack of meaningful dialogue with decision makers is a source of frustration.

Hank Dittmar spoke about Beauty, quoting Roger Scrouton that ‘Ravishing beauties are less important in the aesthetics of architecture than things that fit appropriately together, creating a soothing and harmonious context, a continuous narrative as in a street or a square, where nothing stands out in particular, and good manners prevail.’ Most development is 'development by formula' which has no relation to public space. Developers and planners always prefer a big plot on the edge of town rather than integrating into the village/town. There is a need to promote smaller sites, smaller building companies and local design policies.

Robin Hambleton commented that ‘Making Places’ is forward looking and positively shaping the future, proving CPRE Sussex is more than an 'aspic' organisation!! He made 4 points-

1. 'Placeless' power has grown immeasurably - 'we need decision making that cares about places' even more
2. People now talk about a 'placeless realm' - 'place' is everywhere and nowhere in the expanding digital world - BUT this means we need physical places even more - for our own identity.
3. Urban design matters! Place Matters
4. Decision makers must listen to local people. We need more place-based Leadership to build local democracy.

We had a very useful debate which considered these points and more. Kia Trainor closed the event by talking about future plans for Making Places and the need for more support for local communities and more dialogue between landowners, developers, planners and local people.