About Ebbsfleet

Sitting on the banks of the Thames, only 17 minutes from Kings Cross/St Pancras, Ebbsfleet is being planned to grow out of the chalk quarries and industrial heritage of northern Kent to become a healthy, happy new place to invest, live, work and play.

Ebbsfleet is sponsored by Government to become a ‘Garden City’ to add ambition, quality and pace to planned development between Dartford and Gravesend.

The Garden City benchmark is a commitment to build on the legacy of the original Garden Cities at Welwyn and Letchworth, and create a place founded on quality place-making, community building and sustainability, making long term arrangements for the care of public spaces and assets.

Unlike the original Garden Cities, Ebbsfleet is being built upon previously developed industrial land, most of which has outline planning permissions in place already.

Key elements of the vision for Ebbsfleet include:

• 15,000 new homes, including up to12,842 within the Ebbsfleet urban regeneration area.
• a new commercial centre providing up to 32,000 new local jobs for residents.
• a ‘Healthy new town’ pioneering new approaches to delivering healthcare, more engaged communities and healthier lifestyles.

About Design South East
DSE is a non-profit organisation that helps create great buildings, spaces and places. We are the fastest-growing design advisory organisation in the country.

We support the policy, planning and design process by providing clear, independent and constructive advice that combines local knowledge with informed, insightful expertise, in a flexible and agile way that provides value for money.

Our design review services operate throughout London, the South East and the East of England. We work regularly with more than 30 local authorities and run local design review panels in ten local authority areas including Kingston, Sutton, Guildford, Ashford and Brentwood. We provide informal design advice to local authorities and deliver training for officers and elected members through Kent Design, which is a model shared CPD programme for the public and private sectors.

The Ebbsfleet Design Forum

The Ebbsfleet Design Forum is being established to expand upon and complement the existing design management framework within the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, providing a broader and deeper range of expertise to complement the existing design services provided by the inhouse design team.

Design South East has been contracted to set up and manage a dedicated design review panel for Ebbsfleet Garden City, providing a pool of independent design expertise across a range of key design areas. This panel will be known as the Ebbsfleet Design Forum and is expected to enhance EDC’s capability to deliver a sustainable, resilient, accessible, characterful, biodiverse, smart, connected and healthy Garden City adapted to the conditions in Ebbsfleet. The ‘Design Forum’ name has been chosen to promote an open and collaborative approach to design review panel sessions, focussing on co-design between Forum members and design teams.

The Forum, which will have approximately 20 members, will be composed of architects, landscape architects and urban designers, experts in the fields of accessibility and universal design, progressive highway engineering, environmental design and engineering (sustainability resilience and climate change), active design, water sensitive design, historic environments and public art. The Forum should also include experience across transport interchanges, sports and leisure buildings, mixed-use regeneration, high density housing, and specialist housing, streets and park design.

Forum meetings will be convened to undertake a collaborative design review of a project in collaboration with the design team, EDC’s design and planning officers, typically for the following types of project;

• Major EDC led masterplanning programmes
• EDC led investment projects (e.g. community buildings)
• Reserved matters applications for housing and/or mixed-use
• Reserved matters applications for local squares, neighbourhood and major parks.
• Specialist projects (e.g. secondary schools, leisure buildings, etc)

Key dates

Monday 9^th September (12.00 noon)              Application deadline

Wednesday 11^th September                             Panel members announced*

Thursday 19^th September                               Induction day

Wednesday 25^th September                             Inaugural Design Forum meeting

*If you do not hear from us by the end of the day on Thursday 12^th September, your application has not been successful. Unfortunately, given the number of applications, we will be unable to provide individual feedback to unsuccessful applicants.

How does the design forum work?

Your main role will be to take part in design forum meetings. You should expect to take part in a panel every three or four months. We will schedule monthly design forum meetings for six months at a time. We will ask you what days you are available and send you back a list of panel dates which we ask you to keep free. If in any month there are no schemes to review, we will contact you a week or two before the date to let you know. We may also contact you regarding additional forum dates which we have to schedule at short notice.

As soon as we know what schemes are going to be considered at a forum meeting, we will let you know so that you can inform us if you have any potential conflicts of interest.

A few days before a forum meeting, we will send you a link to drawings and other documents. You should review these before the meeting and consider what questions you may have about the scheme and what issues you may want to raise.

A typical design review of one scheme takes half a day and will include a site visit, a briefing from the local authority, a presentation from the scheme promoter and time for discussion and feedback. Some larger schemes take more than half a day and sometimes we get to review more than one scheme in a day. Sometimes we undertake follow-up reviews where a smaller panel can meet with the promoters and local authority for around two hours.

After the forum meeting the DSE staff member who was present will draft a report. This will be circulated to you to check that it is accurate and comprehensive.  The report sets out the forum’s expert opinion and advice.

The recruitment process

Selection criteria

Successful applicants will demonstrate the following essential criteria:

• A commitment to improving the quality of buildings, streets and places.
• An understanding of the environmental, development, planning and economic context of England.
• A qualification in one of the built environment professions and experience in practice. (Membership of professional bodies would be desirable)
• An understanding and appreciation of the roles played by other professions and players in the built environment, including councillors and community leaders.
• A proven track record in influencing better buildings and spaces and/or advocating for good design.
• Understanding of the design, development and planning process.
• An ability to critically appraise development proposals in a positive and constructive manner.
• An ability to communicate complex design observations to a range of audiences, both lay and professional.

We will be looking for some panel members with a knowledge of Ebbsfleet and its specific contextual considerations

Selection

Recruitment of the forum will be carried out through an open, objective process.  Applications will be assessed jointly by officers from the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation and Design South East. The forum induction will take place on Thursday 19^th September   and all forum members will be expected to attend. Please confirm your availability on the application form.

Terms and conditions

Remuneration

We will pay forum members an honorarium for attending design reviews. The rates are as follows:

Half-day reviews      £300*

Full-day reviews      £400*

Follow-up reviews   £200*

Reasonable travel expenses will also be paid.

Term

Until March 31^st 2021

Time commitment

We ask forum members to commit a minimum of 4 days per year

Relationship to your company/organisation

While we are very grateful that employers release their staff to attend design forum meetings, it is important to note that forum members are appointed as individuals rather than representatives of their company, organisation or other interests.

 

 

How to apply

1. Complete the online application form by following this link:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Ebbsfleetforum

There are two questions requiring longer answers: one that asks you for up to 150 words about your professional experience and another that asks for a statement of up to 200 words about why you want to join the panel and the contribution you think you can make. You may find it helpful to prepare these answers in advance and paste them into the form.

1. Email your CV* (no more than 4 pages) to david@designsoutheast.org

*Please do not send any other information such as portfolios or testimonials.

Deadline

The deadline for applications is 12.00 noon on Monday 9^th September. We expect to make decisions by Wednesday 11^th September.

If, having thoroughly read this pack, you have further questions, please contact David Tittle, david@designsoutheast.org or call 01634 401166 and request a call back.