A Tale of Two Reports Jan Maciag, of Jan Maciag Architects, Peterborough, puts the case for the Fitzwilliam Estate’s plan to develop the livestock market site.

FOR almost a year, Malton has been offered two quite different proposals for retail developments. Both claim they will be good for existing shops. The one for the livestock market site (LMS) comes from Fitzwilliam Malton Estate. The other, to build over Wentworth Street car park (WSCP), is proposed by a developer working for Ryedale District Council (RDC), which also gets to decide which proposal should be given planning permission.

Since RDC stands to benefit to the tune of £5 million if it chooses its own site, you might be looking out for signs of bias in the reports by planning officers submitted to the planning committee.

Discussion has ranged around the planning and functional merits of each. But the two schemes are also profoundly different in their designs: the WSCP proposal is an ‘anywhere’ off-the-shelf design while the LMS scheme is traditional Malton architecture.

Even so, one could be forgiven for thinking that this was a matter of taste and not obviously a rational planning issue. But a careful reading of the two reports reveals a most disturbing and inconsistent bias towards WSCP’s ‘anytown’ style. So vehement is the bias against LMS’s traditional Malton-inspired design that it is being presented to the planning committee as a reason for refusal – without any evidence, as a bad design that will harm the architectural heritage of the town centre.

Who cares, you might ask. All we want is a convenient place to do the shopping and to get cheaper fuel. Well, as Winston Churchill observed: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”. And by that logic the design of Malton’s buildings is for the people of Malton to decide by consensus or through their elected representatives, who should not accept being misled by savvy planning officers.

In fact, the people have so decided, with no objections and only praise for the design of LMS; only rude comments about that of WSCP: if the committee is unable to trust its own judgement, members should trust their constituents.

Let us pause to read what the two reports say.

The WSCP proposal – a gigantic 63,000 square foot box on stilts surrounded by housing terraces – is described thus: “… the scale of the building in relation to the surrounding properties is generally acceptable”. And the scrum of smaller blank boxes and ramps with pitched roofs that surround the big box? “…the use of pitched roofs wrapping around the external elevations of the building give the development a sense of domestic scale and character”.

Even more astonishingly, in a town built predominantly of brick and pantiles, the architects of the WSCP scheme have chosen the currently fashionable ensemble of steel, timber strips and rocks in galvanized steel cages (known as “gabions” – from “big cage” in Italian). Has that been a problem? Not at all! The ever-helpful planning officers offer no objection and commend the proposed buildings being “a simple traditional vernacular, constructed from traditional materials, including stone and timber, which are common to the surrounding area”. Are they thinking of Malton in Canada, perhaps?

But the full blast of ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ criticism is thrown against the traditional architecture of the LMS proposals. A few typical quotes illustrate the tone: “The proposed development is therefore judged to have failed…”, “the scheme is still very vague…”, “The indicative drawings are in themselves very worrying with many incongruous design elements that bear no relation to Malton’s historic character…”, “…designed in the wrong way this link could become an unpleasant and unsavoury place…”, “…not typical for a historic town like Malton”, “…the three-storey car park is too tall and bulky”, “obliteration of Spital Street”, “bulk of development”, “incongruous within this part of Malton”.

You get the message. A massive tin box with gabion feet fits into Malton beautifully and would be an asset! But a subtle and carefully stitched-in two-storey piece of urban repair at the livestock site is “conservative”. Boringly, it “might not result in a distinctive, new addition to the town”. That the LMS proposal is placed to regenerate the existing town centre counts against it – presumably because the planners care not a jot. That it would create a new traditional town square off The Shambles and would seamlessly stitch into the pedestrian routes and alleyways so typical of Malton is somehow horrible… not good enough… dangerous.

So the elected representatives face an awkward choice. Do they judge the proposed schemes on the basis of what they see on the drawings and in their mind’s eye or do they just go along with the planning officers’ delicate insinuation that the LMS proposals are unacceptable and utterly inappropriate?

Because, unless the planning committee sees through this misinformation, Malton will get its big-box-on-sticks supermarket.

Bias over design is, of course, consistent with bias overall. Councillors should remember they will be held to account, by government, through an appeal, and by the highest authority of all, their electors.