We are the team of Human Nature, a Lewes-based development company. We were established with the purpose of planning, designing and building a new generation of beautiful and exemplary places. We make homes across multiple tenures made from natural materials for people of all backgrounds and incomes; establish renewable energy grids; provide for affordable and climate-emergency appropriate transport services and modes; and curate commercial and community spaces dedicated to circular and creative enterprises and economies.
We are building a portfolio of projects to help shift the way people see and experience place and development: from soulless to uplifting, exclusive to inclusive and just, and from planet-killing to climate- and nature-regenerative. The Phoenix is our flagship.
We were honoured to be invited by the community of Lewes and District to bring forward new plans for the North Street area in the aftermath of the failed Santon proposals. Lewes is the town most of us call home and Human Nature is based here, where we directly employ 20 people and many more indirectly.
Our intimate knowledge of the town and North Street area, together with the fact that we have engaged widely and deeply on this project for nearly three years (see below) has supported our evidence gathering and driven the evolution of our plans and designs. We also know, first hand, just how much is at stake here. We feel it every day of our lives. This site – a scar on the Lewes landscape – is of historical and strategic importance, which, when redeveloped sustainably and appropriately, will have a transformative effect on the long-term social and economic wellbeing of Lewes.
The Phoenix will help refresh the ageing demographic of our town, create multiple new opportunities for young people, smash the record for the provision of new affordable homes at a time of housing crisis here as elsewhere, bring new dynamism and spend to the economy, and manifest the wonderful spirit of this non-conformist, creative community. We put it to you that this is a wise and for the first time economically viable use of this precious resource – an edge-of-town-centre brownfield site.
It is no secret that we have had a difficult relationship with the Park’s planning team and, like many in the town, we were dismayed to read its report to you for the forthcoming committee. We will meet you for the first time on 12 October at the Planning Committee, where it seems we will have just a few minutes to explain our vision for this wickedly difficult derelict site, update members on the fast-moving picture on statutory responses and technical matters and/or respond to critical comments in the officer’s reports. That will of course be next to impossible in that tiny window. Accordingly, we hope you will take the opportunity to consider this note of a few of the key points from our reading of that report. We are also preparing a more detailed technical note which we hope will be of interest and use.
While disappointed, given the circumstances, we see no alternative but to defer a decision if you are minded to do so. But the framing and urgency of the process that follows, is of course, central to the acceptable solution going forward. The scheme that emerges from this has to be viable and deliverable economically not a pie-in-the-sky compromise, while retaining the features that make it the systemic exemplar of whole-place and whole-life sustainability it has been conceived and designed comprehensively to be.
We feel that the public and statutory support for the Phoenix – from within Lewes and our deep and wide-ranging engagement programme – have been downplayed and misrepresented in the report. Furthermore, it is our view that the imperatives of the climate emergency are outpacing current planning policy – the Phoenix goes well beyond the narrow focus on operational carbon, considering whole-life embodied carbon, transport and even emissions arising from lifestyle choices and behaviour change.
Our proposals for the Phoenix are designed to reduce the cost of living – especially in regard to energy and transport; to inspire and enable neighbourliness in shared space, shared facilities and services, and to improve the quality of our everyday lives in a richly textured, natural and green place that has the requisite density and amenity to achieve this. Combined, the actions we propose will not only set a new UK benchmark for a project dedicated to addressing the climate emergency, but to help switch the narrative from sacrifice to joy and from an imagined future to everyday reality. Abstract hope becomes action.
As Timothy Crawshaw, immediate past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, writes of the Phoenix: “Active travel and reducing trip demand are the future of places and all too rarely is this followed through in a 'whole place' approach. Not only will a thriving neighbourhood be created but also a new destination for the residents of Lewes will be the outcome. I have followed closely the evolution of this proposed development and can affirm that this type of visionary approach is all too rare in my experience. As a case of learning by doing, many other parts of the UK could look towards Lewes and the Human Nature approach as being the blueprint for the future."
This site, once a centre of industry and then creativity, has been in decline for quarter of a century following flood, fire and failed development. It is eight years since the Park gave approval to Santon’s North Street Quarter, a deeply unpopular, profoundly unsustainable and economically unviable scheme that no developer (Santon included) wanted to build out. And it is telling that only two developers from the entire country were prepared to embrace the risk involved in redesigning the scheme and taking it back through the planning process. Millions have been spent and years wasted, while Lewes waits for new homes including desperately needed affordable housing, flood defences to protect fire services and the Pells area and a consolidated, fit-for-purpose health centre.
The risk is another 25 years of scorched earth, while Lewes’ working age population and school numbers continue to fall, as younger people are further priced out, and the High Street continues to struggle with ever more shops closing.
We were struck by the Lewes District Council’s response to the Phoenix application as statutory consultee on housing. It wrote that the District remains in the “midst of a housing crisis, and the delivery of 685 homes for rent and ownership as part of this scheme represents a significant contribution to meeting local housing needs, levels of which continue to rise. Locally there remain over 70 homeless households in temporary accommodation, with a further 500 applicants registered on the waiting list for social housing.”
It added: “However, it is important to keep in mind that these households only represent those living with the very highest levels of housing need, beyond which there are thousands more residents who are priced out of local rental and home ownership markets. In high value areas such as Lewes, the gap between household income and the income levels needed to buy a home is staggering.”
We ask: why is it so hard to get a deeply considered, necessarily complex and sustainable scheme to be understood and approved when field after field of Sussex is being devoured by volume housebuilders, with sprawling low-density, car-dependent suburbs?
Housing Secretary Michael Gove has this week said the government will “build in the hearts of towns and cities and on brownfield land” instead of greenfields. The NPPF states that planning policies and decisions should promote the “effective use of land”, making “as much use as possible of previously developed or brownfield land”. Locally, Maria Caufileld MP has spoken about the need to protect Sussex greenfields and prioritise brownfields.
This means building with what Nicholas Boys Smith, Chair of the Advisory Board for the Government’s Office for Place, calls “gentle density”. Of the Phoenix, he has written that it is “great to see a smaller, locally rooted developer and it’s marvellous that they are trying to create a proper walkable, gentle-density neighbourhood … there’s a real prize to seize here: creating beautiful and lovable places which are sustainable in the lives that they encourage.”
The Phoenix densities are at the lower end of historic town infill averages for the UK according to a CABE study and both the plan and its location at the edge of the town centre mean it enjoys the amenity to thrive as a place and community.
The officer’s report implies that the Phoenix is not sufficiently sustainable (see more below). This is despite the fact that the Phoenix is seen by many experts in planning, design and development as a new benchmark for sustainable urban neighbourhoods. It was described by The Times as “a trailblazing model for how the UK might meet its Net Zero target”, while Raphie Kaplinsky, Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and author of Sustainable Futures, called the Phoenix the “most innovative, holistic approach to the transition towards a sustainable future and more localised society that I have seen.” He added: “It's extraordinarily commendable, historically significant and it will make Lewes the place to go to see what the future looks like.”
The Phoenix has already won the prestigious Festival of Place’s Future Place Award and was the winner in the category of Masterplanning and Regeneration at the AR Future Projects awards. It was commended in the Oslo Architecture Triennale’s Neighbourhood Index, with judges noting: “If all these promising ambitions are turned into reality by Human Nature, it will indeed be an achievement for more ambitious neighbourhood thinking – and doing – in the UK and beyond."
The level of community engagement undertaken has not been fairly reflected in the officer’s report. We have held more than 150 engagement meetings since 2021, which included 3,000 visits to the Phoenix Design Festival in September 2021 and more than 1,000 visits to the Public Exhibition in April 2022. Since the beginning of 2022, more than 300 members of the public have attended regular workshops, focus groups and briefing sessions. Three working groups made up of local experts met over the year, helping us shape and refine our plans on affordable housing and living, access and mobility and design. This engagement is further detailed in our Statement of Community Involvement, which includes extensive information about how engagement with local individuals and groups has shaped the Phoenix.
The committee report also misrepresents the level of local support, giving significantly more prominence to objection letters than letters of support. It is worth noting here that Lewes Town and District Councils, as well as bodies such as Transition Town Lewes, Cycle Lewes, the Conservation Area Advisory Group, Lewes Living Streets, Love Our Ouse and many community leaders have written in support of the plans.
In the interests of transparency, the below graphics outline the reason for public support and opposition. These demonstrate the variety of reasons for supporting the Phoenix, while most objections were based on the single issue of the removal of trees on the Causeway (for which the Park has already given planning consent in 2015). As below, there was huge support from the Lewes community: of those who responded with a Lewes address, 67.5% of people supported the Phoenix. As you will recognise, this level of support for a development is virtually unheard of.
The officer’s report lists seven issues which are considered outstanding. These will be addressed in detail in our full response, but we would like to draw your attention to a few highlights below:
The committee report is out-of-date and based on a draft report by the cost consultancy working to the Park’s lead adviser. It is clear from the first report that the cost consultant has little experience of costing sustainable buildings that are in line both with Human Nature’s ethos and the Park’s policies. Moreover, their cost norms didn’t get close to meeting the aesthetic and materials standards we are obligated to achieve in the Design Code and through countless representations by townspeople demanding high-quality architecture that manifests the innovative spirit of Lewes per earlier periods of bold and eclectic architectural expression and plot definition that characterise the town.
The Phoenix is, of course, an extremely challenging site, with high remediation and infrastructure costs – particularly the costs associated with flood defences that protect the site and the Pells area. Whatever one thought about the aesthetic or sustainability credentials of that scheme, Santon’s consented North Street Quarter did not provide enough housing to cover these costs – and was wholly unviable. Human Nature and its investors are prepared to take a more modest profit margin compared to traditional developments in order to deliver the affordable homes and wider community and economic benefits for the town that the Park and District Council have asked for, as well as to deliver a high quality and sustainable scheme. This is no small commitment for a business and as a consequence Phoenix can and will deliver more than 200 affordable homes – the largest such scheme ever in the national Park, in Lewes or even in Eastbourne districts.
The report makes little reference to the Park’s letter of 8 June – the formal response to our application, which set out a series of specific design issues related to individual parcels. Following this, and in consultation with the local community, we made a number of significant changes to plans, reducing heights on multiple residential blocks including 1D, 3A, 3B, 5C, 6F, 7A, 8C and 10C and omitting Parcel 11 entirely. This in turn followed a series of significant earlier compromises made to height, massing and edges through earlier consultations. There comes a point when there can be no further such changes.
In the committee report, the Park has returned to more general and open-ended criticism of the design of the Phoenix – a significant change of direction following earlier constructive and detailed observations from officers. It relies heavily on the Park’s heritage officer’s comments, which overstate the development’s impact on Lewes heritage, and includes an outdated response from Historic England, before the above design changes were made.
An updated response from Historic England “welcomes the amendments which are an improvement over the original scheme.” It adds: “The amendments tackled issues over scale and massing where the scheme adjoins the Conservation Area of Lewes and removal of Parcel 11 from within the conservation area from the scheme. It has also addressed key views of Lewes Castle (and Brack Mount) to and from the new development, also providing additional benefits for placemaking and improvements to the Green Wall.” It adds that “some less than substantial harm would still remain.”
Lewes is not a museum of architectural curiosities but rather a living, breathing, adaptive place. It has an economy, a cultural life, places to live, play, learn, work, all constantly adapting in Lewes’ time-honoured non-conformist way acknowledging each and every day the need to renew itself. It has parks, college and leisure sites, council estates, fractured suburbs and broken views and vistas. They are all, in fact and by definition, Lewesian and are inhabited by Lewesians.
It is also a town of remarkable architectural diversity, and idiosyncratic juxtapositions of Medieval, Tudor, Elizabethan, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, Modernist and new vernacular styles. We have given much thought to the question: ‘How do you take influence from the built fabric of Lewes in ways that are fit for the 21st century?’
This has been three years of working, drawing, redrawing, modelling and remodelling to create a neighbourhood of architectural diversity and charm by a world-class team of designers (see below). The Design Code has been shaped in close consultation with the community groups, including the Conservation Advisory Group and local experts, to identify Golden Threads and find ways of weaving them into the Phoenix to lock in appropriate continuity. Aside from Parcel 1, all of the buildings are at outline planning stage and are subject to further design development which gives the Park the opportunity to work with us to refine the details.
The Park’s definition of landscape-led design has to be handled extremely carefully or it is at risk of putting views and selected historical references above people, place and sustainability. The Park sees a ‘riparian’ landscape, whereas everyday we see acre upon acre of cement, twisted steel and missed opportunity: a derelict former industrial site which on two sides overlook Tesco, a sea of car parks, a retail park, miscellaneous new buildings that could be anywhere, an elevated causeway road and another supermarket car park. We challenge this misreading of the site – and we also challenge the misrepresentation of the impact of views.
As our Landscape and Visual Impact Report demonstrates, we are improving many views here – with new access to the river, views of Malling Down, and views back into Lewes from Malling Recreation Ground and the new Thomas Paine bridge. The loss of some views of the landscape is inevitable when designing a legible block structure as Ben Terry, former design officer at the SDNPA wrote in his letter of support: “The scheme proposes to deliver a block structure that is legible at both street level and townscape terms i.e. it connects people with places and successfully stitches new development into old - sensitively enhancing the existing urban fabric and complex landscape setting. The scheme offers clear and legible arrival spaces and routes, using established street patterns and views of local landmarks to aid navigation and enhance the user experience”.
A small number of existing views will be lost but these are more than compensated for by the creation of significant new views from the site. The neigbourhood connects with its industrial heritage through the memory and reinstatement of historic street patterns and the creative adaptation of existing buildings and structures. Furthermore, we are also proposing to build the Phoenix out of natural materials – such as timber, sourcing as much as possible from Sussex woodlands – kickstarting new local industries in bio-based materials and partnering with regenerative local farms for our food programme. Surely this is a powerful and essential new expression of landscape-led development?
It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most talented design teams ever assembled for a project in the UK – described by the Architects’ Journal as a “who’s who of architecture”. The design team includes architects nominated for this year’s Sterling Prize; a winner of the Michael Manser housing award; countless RIBA South East awards; a couple who have been involved in the design of some of Europe’s finest cultural buildings when at David Chipperfield’s studio; designer of the most widely celebrated new co-housing schemes in the UK, the architect of Marmalade Lane in Cambridge; a team that built beautifully in the sensitive parts of Southwold in Suffolk; and the global head of masterplanning for Arup and former Chief Design Office for the Olympic Legacy. WSP - the world’s largest transport consultancy to the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee - and its specialists in Future Mobility helped write the transport strategy for the Phoenix application.
Working in close collaboration, this team has studied, researched precedents, drawn, redrawn, studied again, compared, responded and reworked intensely and iteratively over two years. The designs prepared remain illustrative of course but this work has been undertaken in far greater detail (and at far greater expense) than is usual for an outline scheme. Moreover, at the Director of Planning’s request, following a meeting at which he suggested he was pleased with the direction of travel of the masterplan, stated that the emerging designs were ‘award-winning’ and asked if we would undertake a detailed design for a parcel of development (at the cost to Human Nature of c£1million) to ‘demonstrate to members’, in terms, how the Design Code can translate into details.
The report misrepresents our sustainable construction plan. The Phoenix will be the largest timber, natural and salvaged materials-based project in the UK. It will hit a LETI 1 embodied carbon target of 200-250kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per square metre of building area. This alone will generate 17,258 tonnes of carbon savings, help stimulate a centre of excellence in green construction (further enhancing Lewes’ established strength in ‘making’) and provide supply chain opportunities for Sussex-based and other regional woodlands.
The 17,258 tonnes of carbon savings – effectively making the development climate-regenerative rather than the traditionally vast climate burden of development on this scale – dwarf the much smaller savings that can be achieved in shifting operational carbon emissions from 1,237 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents to ‘net zero’. We continue to work with the Park’s expert adviser on these matters and have resolved most if not all of the outstanding concerns. If we’re serious about the climate emergency rather than about hitting every existing narrowly-circumscribed policy, then this commitment on embodied carbon should be celebrated and other targets put in their proper perspective.
Reducing transport emissions is the single largest impact that can be achieved in a development: a ‘net zero’ scheme which builds in car dependency cannot be sustainable given that these emissions dwarf operational and even embodied carbon. There is little point in declaring a climate emergency while advocating for more parking or paltry modal shifts in a town centre from walking, cycling, buses, trains and EV car club, hire and share services to private car ownership and use.
As per the Department for Transport’s Decarbonising Transport report, “we must make public transport, cycling and walking the natural first choice for all who can take it.” In order to come close to achieving climate targets in line with the Paris Agreement, we must reduce our reliance on private car ownership and generate fewer trips.
The modal shift in transport enabled by this proposal is a strength of the design – ambitious, achievable and imperative. Shouldn’t the SDNPA and East Sussex Highways work constructively with Human Nature, Lewes Town and District and local people represented by Cycle Lewes and Lewes Living Streets to ensure this urgently needed shift happens – enabling the change rather than decrying the objective? It can be done and new residents in the Phoenix – who will of course have chosen to live in a greener, calmer, less polluted neighbourhood – will combine with others in the town to make the whole town more livable.
Our proposals for a walkable neighbourhood with green streets and gentle urbanism of block and plot differentiation, combined with world-class, shared mobility services – all situated at the edge of a town centre in a small town with good bus services and an accessible railway network – will combine to minimise local air pollution, make for lovely streets that can be enjoyed by all, promote active travel and healthy lifestyles, massively reduce car travel and associated impacts in terms of road safety and congestion. This can deliver carbon savings of circa 30,000 tonnes – these savings are over 90% greater than the savings that would be achieved if all buildings were zero carbon.
People moving to the Phoenix will know that parking will be strictly limited and many will move here precisely because of this. They want the quality of life, the social interaction and community it offers. It’s also worth reflecting that in the Lansdown neighbourhood of Lewes, which has narrow, low traffic streets and is a short walk from the station and the High Street, 49% of households do not own a car or van despite the town’s current lack of mobility services (ONS – Census 2021). With the comprehensive package of mobility services, public transport improvements and in line with the trends amongst young people not owning cars (as evidenced in the DfT latest modelling) we are confident that our measures will support our approach.
Our team continues to work with the officers at East Sussex County Council to resolve the final outstanding technical transport analysis matters, which we are advised can be completed within the next month.
We remain determined to find an agreed way forward. In good faith, we look forward to working with the Park to find the best solution for this site and creating an exemplary sustainable community.
– the Human Nature team
We are the team of Human Nature, a Lewes-based development company. We were established with the purpose of planning, designing and building a new generation of beautiful and exemplary places. We make homes across multiple tenures made from natural materials for people of all backgrounds and incomes; establish renewable energy grids; provide for affordable and climate-emergency appropriate transport services and modes; and curate commercial and community spaces dedicated to circular and creative enterprises and economies.
We are building a portfolio of projects to help shift the way people see and experience place and development: from soulless to uplifting, exclusive to inclusive and just, and from planet-killing to climate- and nature-regenerative. The Phoenix is our flagship.
We were honoured to be invited by the community of Lewes and District to bring forward new plans for the North Street area in the aftermath of the failed Santon proposals. Lewes is the town most of us call home and Human Nature is based here, where we directly employ 20 people and many more indirectly.
Our intimate knowledge of the town and North Street area, together with the fact that we have engaged widely and deeply on this project for nearly three years (see below) has supported our evidence gathering and driven the evolution of our plans and designs. We also know, first hand, just how much is at stake here. We feel it every day of our lives. This site – a scar on the Lewes landscape – is of historical and strategic importance, which, when redeveloped sustainably and appropriately, will have a transformative effect on the long-term social and economic wellbeing of Lewes.
The Phoenix will help refresh the ageing demographic of our town, create multiple new opportunities for young people, smash the record for the provision of new affordable homes at a time of housing crisis here as elsewhere, bring new dynamism and spend to the economy, and manifest the wonderful spirit of this non-conformist, creative community. We put it to you that this is a wise and for the first time economically viable use of this precious resource – an edge-of-town-centre brownfield site.
It is no secret that we have had a difficult relationship with the Park’s planning team and, like many in the town, we were dismayed to read its report to you for the forthcoming committee. We will meet you for the first time on 12 October at the Planning Committee, where it seems we will have just a few minutes to explain our vision for this wickedly difficult derelict site, update members on the fast-moving picture on statutory responses and technical matters and/or respond to critical comments in the officer’s reports. That will of course be next to impossible in that tiny window. Accordingly, we hope you will take the opportunity to consider this note of a few of the key points from our reading of that report. We are also preparing a more detailed technical note which we hope will be of interest and use.
While disappointed, given the circumstances, we see no alternative but to defer a decision if you are minded to do so. But the framing and urgency of the process that follows, is of course, central to the acceptable solution going forward. The scheme that emerges from this has to be viable and deliverable economically not a pie-in-the-sky compromise, while retaining the features that make it the systemic exemplar of whole-place and whole-life sustainability it has been conceived and designed comprehensively to be.
We feel that the public and statutory support for the Phoenix – from within Lewes and our deep and wide-ranging engagement programme – have been downplayed and misrepresented in the report. Furthermore, it is our view that the imperatives of the climate emergency are outpacing current planning policy – the Phoenix goes well beyond the narrow focus on operational carbon, considering whole-life embodied carbon, transport and even emissions arising from lifestyle choices and behaviour change.
Our proposals for the Phoenix are designed to reduce the cost of living – especially in regard to energy and transport; to inspire and enable neighbourliness in shared space, shared facilities and services, and to improve the quality of our everyday lives in a richly textured, natural and green place that has the requisite density and amenity to achieve this. Combined, the actions we propose will not only set a new UK benchmark for a project dedicated to addressing the climate emergency, but to help switch the narrative from sacrifice to joy and from an imagined future to everyday reality. Abstract hope becomes action.
As Timothy Crawshaw, immediate past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, writes of the Phoenix: “Active travel and reducing trip demand are the future of places and all too rarely is this followed through in a 'whole place' approach. Not only will a thriving neighbourhood be created but also a new destination for the residents of Lewes will be the outcome. I have followed closely the evolution of this proposed development and can affirm that this type of visionary approach is all too rare in my experience. As a case of learning by doing, many other parts of the UK could look towards Lewes and the Human Nature approach as being the blueprint for the future."
This site, once a centre of industry and then creativity, has been in decline for quarter of a century following flood, fire and failed development. It is eight years since the Park gave approval to Santon’s North Street Quarter, a deeply unpopular, profoundly unsustainable and economically unviable scheme that no developer (Santon included) wanted to build out. And it is telling that only two developers from the entire country were prepared to embrace the risk involved in redesigning the scheme and taking it back through the planning process. Millions have been spent and years wasted, while Lewes waits for new homes including desperately needed affordable housing, flood defences to protect fire services and the Pells area and a consolidated, fit-for-purpose health centre.
The risk is another 25 years of scorched earth, while Lewes’ working age population and school numbers continue to fall, as younger people are further priced out, and the High Street continues to struggle with ever more shops closing.
We were struck by the Lewes District Council’s response to the Phoenix application as statutory consultee on housing. It wrote that the District remains in the “midst of a housing crisis, and the delivery of 685 homes for rent and ownership as part of this scheme represents a significant contribution to meeting local housing needs, levels of which continue to rise. Locally there remain over 70 homeless households in temporary accommodation, with a further 500 applicants registered on the waiting list for social housing.”
It added: “However, it is important to keep in mind that these households only represent those living with the very highest levels of housing need, beyond which there are thousands more residents who are priced out of local rental and home ownership markets. In high value areas such as Lewes, the gap between household income and the income levels needed to buy a home is staggering.”
We ask: why is it so hard to get a deeply considered, necessarily complex and sustainable scheme to be understood and approved when field after field of Sussex is being devoured by volume housebuilders, with sprawling low-density, car-dependent suburbs?
Housing Secretary Michael Gove has this week said the government will “build in the hearts of towns and cities and on brownfield land” instead of greenfields. The NPPF states that planning policies and decisions should promote the “effective use of land”, making “as much use as possible of previously developed or brownfield land”. Locally, Maria Caufileld MP has spoken about the need to protect Sussex greenfields and prioritise brownfields.
This means building with what Nicholas Boys Smith, Chair of the Advisory Board for the Government’s Office for Place, calls “gentle density”. Of the Phoenix, he has written that it is “great to see a smaller, locally rooted developer and it’s marvellous that they are trying to create a proper walkable, gentle-density neighbourhood … there’s a real prize to seize here: creating beautiful and lovable places which are sustainable in the lives that they encourage.”
The Phoenix densities are at the lower end of historic town infill averages for the UK according to a CABE study and both the plan and its location at the edge of the town centre mean it enjoys the amenity to thrive as a place and community.
The officer’s report implies that the Phoenix is not sufficiently sustainable (see more below). This is despite the fact that the Phoenix is seen by many experts in planning, design and development as a new benchmark for sustainable urban neighbourhoods. It was described by The Times as “a trailblazing model for how the UK might meet its Net Zero target”, while Raphie Kaplinsky, Emeritus Professor at the University of Sussex and author of Sustainable Futures, called the Phoenix the “most innovative, holistic approach to the transition towards a sustainable future and more localised society that I have seen.” He added: “It's extraordinarily commendable, historically significant and it will make Lewes the place to go to see what the future looks like.”
The Phoenix has already won the prestigious Festival of Place’s Future Place Award and was the winner in the category of Masterplanning and Regeneration at the AR Future Projects awards. It was commended in the Oslo Architecture Triennale’s Neighbourhood Index, with judges noting: “If all these promising ambitions are turned into reality by Human Nature, it will indeed be an achievement for more ambitious neighbourhood thinking – and doing – in the UK and beyond."
The level of community engagement undertaken has not been fairly reflected in the officer’s report. We have held more than 150 engagement meetings since 2021, which included 3,000 visits to the Phoenix Design Festival in September 2021 and more than 1,000 visits to the Public Exhibition in April 2022. Since the beginning of 2022, more than 300 members of the public have attended regular workshops, focus groups and briefing sessions. Three working groups made up of local experts met over the year, helping us shape and refine our plans on affordable housing and living, access and mobility and design. This engagement is further detailed in our Statement of Community Involvement, which includes extensive information about how engagement with local individuals and groups has shaped the Phoenix.
The committee report also misrepresents the level of local support, giving significantly more prominence to objection letters than letters of support. It is worth noting here that Lewes Town and District Councils, as well as bodies such as Transition Town Lewes, Cycle Lewes, the Conservation Area Advisory Group, Lewes Living Streets, Love Our Ouse and many community leaders have written in support of the plans.
In the interests of transparency, the below graphics outline the reason for public support and opposition. These demonstrate the variety of reasons for supporting the Phoenix, while most objections were based on the single issue of the removal of trees on the Causeway (for which the Park has already given planning consent in 2015). As below, there was huge support from the Lewes community: of those who responded with a Lewes address, 67.5% of people supported the Phoenix. As you will recognise, this level of support for a development is virtually unheard of.
The officer’s report lists seven issues which are considered outstanding. These will be addressed in detail in our full response, but we would like to draw your attention to a few highlights below:
The committee report is out-of-date and based on a draft report by the cost consultancy working to the Park’s lead adviser. It is clear from the first report that the cost consultant has little experience of costing sustainable buildings that are in line both with Human Nature’s ethos and the Park’s policies. Moreover, their cost norms didn’t get close to meeting the aesthetic and materials standards we are obligated to achieve in the Design Code and through countless representations by townspeople demanding high-quality architecture that manifests the innovative spirit of Lewes per earlier periods of bold and eclectic architectural expression and plot definition that characterise the town.
The Phoenix is, of course, an extremely challenging site, with high remediation and infrastructure costs – particularly the costs associated with flood defences that protect the site and the Pells area. Whatever one thought about the aesthetic or sustainability credentials of that scheme, Santon’s consented North Street Quarter did not provide enough housing to cover these costs – and was wholly unviable. Human Nature and its investors are prepared to take a more modest profit margin compared to traditional developments in order to deliver the affordable homes and wider community and economic benefits for the town that the Park and District Council have asked for, as well as to deliver a high quality and sustainable scheme. This is no small commitment for a business and as a consequence Phoenix can and will deliver more than 200 affordable homes – the largest such scheme ever in the national Park, in Lewes or even in Eastbourne districts.
The report makes little reference to the Park’s letter of 8 June – the formal response to our application, which set out a series of specific design issues related to individual parcels. Following this, and in consultation with the local community, we made a number of significant changes to plans, reducing heights on multiple residential blocks including 1D, 3A, 3B, 5C, 6F, 7A, 8C and 10C and omitting Parcel 11 entirely. This in turn followed a series of significant earlier compromises made to height, massing and edges through earlier consultations. There comes a point when there can be no further such changes.
In the committee report, the Park has returned to more general and open-ended criticism of the design of the Phoenix – a significant change of direction following earlier constructive and detailed observations from officers. It relies heavily on the Park’s heritage officer’s comments, which overstate the development’s impact on Lewes heritage, and includes an outdated response from Historic England, before the above design changes were made.
An updated response from Historic England “welcomes the amendments which are an improvement over the original scheme.” It adds: “The amendments tackled issues over scale and massing where the scheme adjoins the Conservation Area of Lewes and removal of Parcel 11 from within the conservation area from the scheme. It has also addressed key views of Lewes Castle (and Brack Mount) to and from the new development, also providing additional benefits for placemaking and improvements to the Green Wall.” It adds that “some less than substantial harm would still remain.”
Lewes is not a museum of architectural curiosities but rather a living, breathing, adaptive place. It has an economy, a cultural life, places to live, play, learn, work, all constantly adapting in Lewes’ time-honoured non-conformist way acknowledging each and every day the need to renew itself. It has parks, college and leisure sites, council estates, fractured suburbs and broken views and vistas. They are all, in fact and by definition, Lewesian and are inhabited by Lewesians.
It is also a town of remarkable architectural diversity, and idiosyncratic juxtapositions of Medieval, Tudor, Elizabethan, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, Modernist and new vernacular styles. We have given much thought to the question: ‘How do you take influence from the built fabric of Lewes in ways that are fit for the 21st century?’
This has been three years of working, drawing, redrawing, modelling and remodelling to create a neighbourhood of architectural diversity and charm by a world-class team of designers (see below). The Design Code has been shaped in close consultation with the community groups, including the Conservation Advisory Group and local experts, to identify Golden Threads and find ways of weaving them into the Phoenix to lock in appropriate continuity. Aside from Parcel 1, all of the buildings are at outline planning stage and are subject to further design development which gives the Park the opportunity to work with us to refine the details.
The Park’s definition of landscape-led design has to be handled extremely carefully or it is at risk of putting views and selected historical references above people, place and sustainability. The Park sees a ‘riparian’ landscape, whereas everyday we see acre upon acre of cement, twisted steel and missed opportunity: a derelict former industrial site which on two sides overlook Tesco, a sea of car parks, a retail park, miscellaneous new buildings that could be anywhere, an elevated causeway road and another supermarket car park. We challenge this misreading of the site – and we also challenge the misrepresentation of the impact of views.
As our Landscape and Visual Impact Report demonstrates, we are improving many views here – with new access to the river, views of Malling Down, and views back into Lewes from Malling Recreation Ground and the new Thomas Paine bridge. The loss of some views of the landscape is inevitable when designing a legible block structure as Ben Terry, former design officer at the SDNPA wrote in his letter of support: “The scheme proposes to deliver a block structure that is legible at both street level and townscape terms i.e. it connects people with places and successfully stitches new development into old - sensitively enhancing the existing urban fabric and complex landscape setting. The scheme offers clear and legible arrival spaces and routes, using established street patterns and views of local landmarks to aid navigation and enhance the user experience”.
A small number of existing views will be lost but these are more than compensated for by the creation of significant new views from the site. The neigbourhood connects with its industrial heritage through the memory and reinstatement of historic street patterns and the creative adaptation of existing buildings and structures. Furthermore, we are also proposing to build the Phoenix out of natural materials – such as timber, sourcing as much as possible from Sussex woodlands – kickstarting new local industries in bio-based materials and partnering with regenerative local farms for our food programme. Surely this is a powerful and essential new expression of landscape-led development?
It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most talented design teams ever assembled for a project in the UK – described by the Architects’ Journal as a “who’s who of architecture”. The design team includes architects nominated for this year’s Sterling Prize; a winner of the Michael Manser housing award; countless RIBA South East awards; a couple who have been involved in the design of some of Europe’s finest cultural buildings when at David Chipperfield’s studio; designer of the most widely celebrated new co-housing schemes in the UK, the architect of Marmalade Lane in Cambridge; a team that built beautifully in the sensitive parts of Southwold in Suffolk; and the global head of masterplanning for Arup and former Chief Design Office for the Olympic Legacy. WSP - the world’s largest transport consultancy to the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee - and its specialists in Future Mobility helped write the transport strategy for the Phoenix application.
Working in close collaboration, this team has studied, researched precedents, drawn, redrawn, studied again, compared, responded and reworked intensely and iteratively over two years. The designs prepared remain illustrative of course but this work has been undertaken in far greater detail (and at far greater expense) than is usual for an outline scheme. Moreover, at the Director of Planning’s request, following a meeting at which he suggested he was pleased with the direction of travel of the masterplan, stated that the emerging designs were ‘award-winning’ and asked if we would undertake a detailed design for a parcel of development (at the cost to Human Nature of c£1million) to ‘demonstrate to members’, in terms, how the Design Code can translate into details.
The report misrepresents our sustainable construction plan. The Phoenix will be the largest timber, natural and salvaged materials-based project in the UK. It will hit a LETI 1 embodied carbon target of 200-250kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per square metre of building area. This alone will generate 17,258 tonnes of carbon savings, help stimulate a centre of excellence in green construction (further enhancing Lewes’ established strength in ‘making’) and provide supply chain opportunities for Sussex-based and other regional woodlands.
The 17,258 tonnes of carbon savings – effectively making the development climate-regenerative rather than the traditionally vast climate burden of development on this scale – dwarf the much smaller savings that can be achieved in shifting operational carbon emissions from 1,237 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents to ‘net zero’. We continue to work with the Park’s expert adviser on these matters and have resolved most if not all of the outstanding concerns. If we’re serious about the climate emergency rather than about hitting every existing narrowly-circumscribed policy, then this commitment on embodied carbon should be celebrated and other targets put in their proper perspective.
Reducing transport emissions is the single largest impact that can be achieved in a development: a ‘net zero’ scheme which builds in car dependency cannot be sustainable given that these emissions dwarf operational and even embodied carbon. There is little point in declaring a climate emergency while advocating for more parking or paltry modal shifts in a town centre from walking, cycling, buses, trains and EV car club, hire and share services to private car ownership and use.
As per the Department for Transport’s Decarbonising Transport report, “we must make public transport, cycling and walking the natural first choice for all who can take it.” In order to come close to achieving climate targets in line with the Paris Agreement, we must reduce our reliance on private car ownership and generate fewer trips.
The modal shift in transport enabled by this proposal is a strength of the design – ambitious, achievable and imperative. Shouldn’t the SDNPA and East Sussex Highways work constructively with Human Nature, Lewes Town and District and local people represented by Cycle Lewes and Lewes Living Streets to ensure this urgently needed shift happens – enabling the change rather than decrying the objective? It can be done and new residents in the Phoenix – who will of course have chosen to live in a greener, calmer, less polluted neighbourhood – will combine with others in the town to make the whole town more livable.
Our proposals for a walkable neighbourhood with green streets and gentle urbanism of block and plot differentiation, combined with world-class, shared mobility services – all situated at the edge of a town centre in a small town with good bus services and an accessible railway network – will combine to minimise local air pollution, make for lovely streets that can be enjoyed by all, promote active travel and healthy lifestyles, massively reduce car travel and associated impacts in terms of road safety and congestion. This can deliver carbon savings of circa 30,000 tonnes – these savings are over 90% greater than the savings that would be achieved if all buildings were zero carbon.
People moving to the Phoenix will know that parking will be strictly limited and many will move here precisely because of this. They want the quality of life, the social interaction and community it offers. It’s also worth reflecting that in the Lansdown neighbourhood of Lewes, which has narrow, low traffic streets and is a short walk from the station and the High Street, 49% of households do not own a car or van despite the town’s current lack of mobility services (ONS – Census 2021). With the comprehensive package of mobility services, public transport improvements and in line with the trends amongst young people not owning cars (as evidenced in the DfT latest modelling) we are confident that our measures will support our approach.
Our team continues to work with the officers at East Sussex County Council to resolve the final outstanding technical transport analysis matters, which we are advised can be completed within the next month.
We remain determined to find an agreed way forward. In good faith, we look forward to working with the Park to find the best solution for this site and creating an exemplary sustainable community.
– the Human Nature team