Canterbury Heritage Design Forum: Home Page


CONSERVATION Correct materials; Skilled repair	HISTORIC VIEWS At street level and from a distance	STREETSCAPE Highway form; Control of clutter

NEW BUILDINGS Quality design; design guidelines	SHOP FRONTS Retain historic frontages	ADVERTISING Traditional and minimal signage

WHO?: The Canterbury Heritage Design Forum is a group of residents and professionals working to preserve and enhance the heritage environment of the City of Canterbury, promoting good design and an awareness of our heritage as it is contained in our buildings and urban townscape. The Forum consists of voluntary representatives of professional organisations, including the Royal Institution of British Architects, the Royal institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, Canterbury Archaeological Trust, and representatives of local and national amenity groups and Residents’ Associations.

WHY?: The precursor of the Canterbury Heritage Design Forum, (CHDF), was initially set up in the 1970s in response to central government legislation when the group was formed as the Canterbury Conservation Advisory Committee, (CCAC). It has a watching brief for all planning applications and developments that affect Canterbury conservation areas, and we feed our comments to Canterbury City Council. For example we submitted our detailed proposals on ways to improve the 2023 Levelling Up programme of concept designs for 9 public realm and green space improvements around the city.

HOW?: Since 2016 alone, CHDF has examined 1472 applications and commented on 1120 of them. We have also commented on items such as the local plan, development areas and held pre-application presentation sessions with architects who are planning developments in the City. We meet at four-weekly intervals with the dates of meetings co-ordinated with the city council’s planning committee meetings and any deadlines for commenting on applications. We liaise regularly with Canterbury Council Heritage Officers, and the Management Committee of the World Heritage Site.

PLANNING APPLICATIONS

Whenever CHDF formally objects to a planning application, it asks the relevant Ward Councillor(s) to “call in” the application, to a planning committee meeting, and CHDF may then send a representative to the meeting to put our case. A call in may mean that the planning and conservation officers negotiate changes, improvements or a redesign to an application which answers our concerns and makes a proposal compliant with policy.

It should be emphasised that we also comment favourably on applications, either in terms of their design, or on the form of the applications themselves, when drawings, a piece of analysis, or a design merit this.

A good example is the masterplan for Christ Church University, on which we were consulted. This seeks to improve both the visual and pedestrian connection between St Martin’s Church and the Cathedral, opening up a view, not seen for 200 years, as part of the redevelopment of the former prison site. We considered this a very good piece of modern urban design and an exciting redevelopment, which should contribute positively to our future heritage, although we objected to the proposed roof top plant design on the grounds that it causes significant harm to the World Heritage Site.

Lolcation of Canterbury World Heritage Sites

Canterbury World Heritage Site - see UNESCO listing.

We would support a re-opening of the route shown above as a new, direct and historic way for visitors to travel between the Cathedral and St Martin's Church.