MPs attack Cabe over transparency and conflicts

A committee of MPs has delivered a stinging critique of the powerful government quango that reviews planning applications for large commercial property developments.

A committee of MPs has delivered a stinging critique of the powerful government quango that reviews planning applications for large commercial property developments.

MPs yesterday said that the credibility of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) was at stake because of a lack of transparency in its operation and potential conflicts of interest among Cabe's commissioners and its design review panel.

Cabe's views on planning applications carry weight with local authorities deciding whether to grant permission for new commercial developments.

"The value of its advice is in danger of being undermined," said the report, published by the Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

The MPs said Cabe's advice was valued but concluded the quango should be prepared to carry out more radical reforms to alter public perceptions and to make it a more accountable and transparent organisation.

The MPs said that some witnesses who appeared before its review found that Cabe was a "self-serving clique".

The MPs' comments come a year after an independent auditor's report commissioned by the Government into the handling of potential conflicts of interest at Cabe concluded that its chairman should not also be a commercial property developer. Sir Stuart Lipton, Cabe's then chairman and the major shareholder and chairman of Stanhope, the leading property com- pany, resigned before the publication of the auditor's report.

Yesterday's report said: "While the new chairman [John Sorrell, a former chairman of the Design Council] is not a developer, development interests are still too heavily represented on Cabe which may skew its priorities in favour of new development rather than conservation."

The MPs said many submissions to its review pointed out that while Sir Stuart had left, there were still eight commissioners at Cabe with associations with his company. They said Cabe's design review function had raised the most concern because of the "cursory" nature of some of its considerations.

A Cabe statement said it welcomed the report. "We propose to work with the ODPM to agree appropriate ways to respond to the Committee's substantial recommendations for further improving the operation of design review."