“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
—David Graeber
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What is a Design & Access Statement?
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A Design & Access Statement is usually a short report that accompanies and supports a planning application. It illustrates the process that has led to the development proposal and explains the design, allowing applicants to specify how their development proposal responds appropriately to the site and its setting.
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By March 2026, our Pre-Application document had been upgraded to a full Design & Access Statement, in preparation to formally submit as part of our first planning application for the Neighbourhood Public Square site. This built directly on the Physical Infrastructure Design chapter and Pre-Application before it.
As this document would be publicly available—with the application open for comments on Birmingham City Council’s Planning Online—we wanted to make the information available both useful to planners and engaging to anyone, using the Design & Access Statement as a key place to get a fuller picture of the site, one that was highly visual and incorporated a lot of the journey to here.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these statements tend to focus on aspects of the building’s design (things like density, layout, scale, landscape and appearance) and how it is practically accessed. However, we took deep inspiration from The Phoenix, Lewes in their Design & Access Statement approach, which brought together more around the values and purpose behind the site’s design, as well as clear responses to process of meaningful exchange and co-design with community members, beyond what we had so typically seen as rightfully critiqued, often tokenistic, ‘consultation’ by developers.
Rather than setting the navigation of the document using typical planning elements, we instead structured ours around 6 key sections:
This allowed us to weave important foundational work from throughout the Neighbourhood Public Square proposal, such as 3ºC Neighbourhood and Endowing The Future, with the dreams, hopes and contributions of many neighbours and partners, findings of our research such as Neighbourhood Doughnut and Building Skills, and situate the most direct reference to the physical design, condition of the site, change of use, and more required for our application to be considered by planning within it all, refusing to collapse the range of work and many voices, but also wanting to provide information legibly for the application process to be as smooth as possible.
As outlined in Neighbourhood Public Square: Explore The Planning Application, practically speaking our planning application was composed of this Design & Access Statement alongside Architectural Drawings, Surveys & Assessments, and Planning Forms & Notices, which was also bolstered with Supplementary Planning Policy Statements where needed, with an example shared further down this page.
To explore the full planning application in more detail, go to: Neighbourhood Public Square: Explore The Planning Application
For more on how the Design & Access Statement was opened up in big and small ways, go to: It’s Planning Time!
**Whilst comments on the planning application are now closed, we are still awaiting the decision from Birmingham City Council.
Please cross your fingers for us!**
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This application seeks consent for a phased retrofit of existing buildings at Tubeworks, Rotton Park Street, Birmingham, B16 0AB. The first stage in this wider development is the change of use, the enabling works to the existing buildings and the consent for erection of temporary structures.
Here we outline preliminary information regarding how Neighbourhood Public Square will meet the planning and local context of the neighbourhood.
Explore our Design & Access Statement here:
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Please Note: This file is a low resolution quality in order to meet the file specification for uploads to Birmingham City Council’s Planning Online (max 8 MB).
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TzIa3Vxu08OyLR38hPR_09OJf0nCYW4e/view
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Open or download the Design & Access Statement in full quality resolution:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fvG-ZqVx2K-pn_AYXj5SuSVWhYYrzqEm/view
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Please note: At this stage of the planning process, our Design & Access Statement is presented initially to underpin the site’s Enabling Works, with more detailed design to be developed together beyond this initial stage.
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