Security forces

17/10/2008

A great place to live can be ruined by crime. The threat of break-ins and anti-social behaviour can make life miserable for whole communities, and often the design of an estate only adds to the problem.

Designing out crime has been a rising concern in recent years. Rather than creating a fortress of locked gates, barbed wire and CCTV, there are a host of alternative ways to deter crooks without threatening the sense of community.

Not only has technology created better crimemapping and new products, but schemes between planners, housing providers and crime experts have evolved. And along with a growing emphasis on involving residents and listening to their concerns, these developments have brought crime to the centre of the planning agenda.

Designing out crime has had direct police support since 1999, when the Association of Chief Police Officers set up its secured by design initiative to offer planning advice and accreditation to secure products.

Every police force in England employs a specialist architectural liaison officer assigned by SBD, who looks at major planning applications and gives a view on how they could be made safer.

In 2004 the government supported the work of SBD when it released its guidance paper on designing out crime, Safer places. The most recent evidence shows the significant effect good design can have on community safety – SBD officers have been working with Glasgow Housing Association as it refurbishes its stock, and so far 2,000 homes have been brought up to SBD safety standards.

Research due out this month covering a sample of 14,000 homes in Glasgow shows the burglary rate in SBD areas has fallen by 51 per cent compared with those still awaiting refurbishment – even taking into account the general reduction in crime.

Apart from obvious security features, including high-quality doors, locks and windows, general estate layout is crucial to discouraging crime. Key to this is the idea of ‘natural surveillance’, or making sure communally accessible areas can be observed. So no more pokey back alleyways or garages placed out of sight of windows.

‘The presence of ordinary people reduces the fear of crime and reassures residents, and most offenders do not want to be identified,’ says Tim Pascoe, consultant and chair of the Designing Out Crime Association.

In recent years, experts have been trying to encourage more people onto the streets as a form of natural surveillance. Brian Quinn, a senior programme officer at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, says this stimulates the community and makes everywhere feel safer. ‘In the past, we created neighbourhoods that didn’t necessarily have facilities and people were obliged to use their cars and didn’t walk about so places felt less safe,’ he says.

‘We want people on the streets as well as making sure places are overlooked by buildings. We want neighbourhoods that are active and vital.’

Planners need to think about adding shops or playgrounds, creating good walking and cycling access routes, and locating estates near to good facilities, Mr Quinn adds.

Although gating communities from the outside world can stop criminals or anti-social youths from coming in, it also cuts off community flow.

‘There is also a social cohesion point for people to be in a community which is integrated. Often people in gated communities have an unrealistic fear of crime,’ Mr Quinn says.

The need to balance security issues with making a place feel pleasant is one of the major dilemmas of designing out crime. Design experts say there is always a range of solutions for different places. But those with different priorities can want different things.

Professor Lorraine Gamman, director of the design against crime research centre at Central St Martins College of Art and Design, is firmly against what she calls ‘target hardening’ – fortifying the environment rather than taking a softer approach to designing out crime.

‘We work for users and abusers,’ she says, asking why designs should focus on repelling the criminal.

‘They are such a small part of it. The police are focused on crime and they make [a target] harder and more defensible.’

But she knows a balance needs to be struck. ‘Often architects don’t think about criminality at all, and pretend horrible people don’t exist,’ she adds.

Alan McInnes, national general manager of SBD, says designers need to consider crime earlier. For example, the government’s eco-town plans don’t do enough of this, he says. SBD has commissioned research to look at how the risk of crime can be reduced in the proposed eco-towns.

‘At no point have they considered the impact of crime,’ Mr McInnes says. ‘[The planned eco-towns] tend to be rather small communities with parking in a park-and-ride on the outside. Our experience of isolated car parks is they suffer high levels of crime issues not addressed in these designs.’

The current system means architectural liaison officers are often not called into the design process until a major planning application has been submitted. This can lead to clashes of approach if the police recommend fundamental changes at the last minute.

But Manchester takes a different approach – and it could be the template for a new national strategy. In 2005, Manchester Council started stipulating that any planning application for more than 50 homes must have a full report from the SBD architectural liaison unit at Greater Manchester Police before submission.

The developer must contact the unit as soon as it has an outline idea for a site – at which point experts, made up of former planning and design professionals, will visit the site and analyse its crime risks.

Developers will be given an initial report detailing the crime hazards and pitfalls they should avoid when fleshing out the plan. The unit will field architects’ queries, and when the application is ready to go to the council a second report is written on the final design.

Good deal

It charges about 5 per cent of the cost of the planning fee to sustain the service, a levy that can be unpopular. But developers get a good deal, and the scheme has been such a success all 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester have adopted it, says unit head Mike Hodge.

‘We are not influencing the intention of the design or their style, but we are influencing the way they carry it out,’ he says.

‘If we come in when a plan is finished and they have put in the application, and say “we want some buildings in here”, the architects will feel it will ruin [the plan]. The best interventions are the ones you can’t see because they fit the system.’

As well as developing working relationships, developing technologies are helping the fight against crime in a residential setting. Mr Pascoe points to the recent use of geographical imaging systems to map crime hot spots and levels of different crimes in an area (see feature, page 50).

This can help inform the type of crime deterrent which could be built in – the police also use their latest local crime data to help their architectural liaison officers advise planners.

The internet is also being used as a resource for sharing best practice. Professor Gamman and her team have been working on bicycle security, and Central St Martins has just created the website bikeoff.org to share the work.

The site also includes a section called Bikeoff TV, where people around the country can post videos of cycle security schemes and methods. The website model could be used to share information for all sorts of designing out crime work, Professor Gamman believes.

‘We wanted to share good practice and have a research base with useful information,’ she says. ‘We thought: “We know all this stuff – how do we share it?”’

As well as advancing technology, the increased focus on community involvement has also made a massive contribution to housing estate design.

Mr Quinn says residents are the key to creating a safe environment. CABE recently published It’s our space, which offers advice on involving residents from the start of any design process.

‘There are lots of ways they can work with us rather than just be consulted, and that is a big, big change,’ he says. ‘The more communities can have an active role in creating new uses for spaces, the less anti-social behaviour there will be. If you involve young people in the design process they are more likely to respect an area they have been involved in creating.’ Designing out crime has taken major steps in recent years, and the growing evidence in support of it means more notice has been taken by planners, developers, local authorities and the government.

The Housing Corporation now advises developing housing associations to conform to SBD standards if they want to qualify for grant funding, and as social housing is upgraded and more is built, the standards of SBD are becoming more widespread.

Advances in technology and information sharing can be tied up with better tenant involvement on the ground, meaning housing estates can become safer places for everyone.