§ Mr. Michael Lathamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) how many architects are employed by the 407W Property Services Agency who are not serving in the Directorate-General of Design Services;
(2) what proporation of the design commissions carried out by the PSA are currently being given to the Directorate-General of Design Services expressed (a) by value and (b) by number;
(3) whether he will make a statement on the achievements to date of the Directorate-General of Design Services; and what improvements in design and in departmental morale and recruitment, have so far resulted, following the adverse criticisms of the Matthew-Skillington Reports;
(4) what is the current staffing establishment of the office of the Director-General of Design Services; how many of them are architects; and how many have been freshly recruited to his Department since the Directorate-General was established.
§ Mr. FreesonThe Director-General of Design Services has produced proposals for his new Design Office and five senior staff and a directing architect to head the team have been appointed. None of those so far selected has been directly recruited from outside. The future programme and the total complement of staff needed for it— by redeploying existing resources—are being worked out. It is intended that the office should undertake a significant representative sample of the Agency's work, and it has been provisionally arranged that it should take responsibility in particular for designing the new PSA headquarters to be built at Teesside under the dispersal programme.
The current staff in the Directorate-General of Design Services is 679, of whom 44 are architects out of a total of 490 architects in PSA.
Apart from the development of the new Design Office, a comprehensive review has been carried out of the Directorate's responsibilities for technical development work and other specialist functions with a view to ensuring that future work is closely concentrated on clearly identified needs. Better machinery has been set up for disseminating practical guidance in the Agency on design issues, and the PSA Board is currently 408W considering how more effectively to provide for evaluation and monitoring of design matters at top management level While it would be premature at this stage to assess the achievements of the new Directorate-General of Design Services I am sure that the measures being taken will help to foster professional morale and stimulate the quality of design work in the Agency.
§ Mr. Michael Lathamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether the Director-General of Design Services has yet been able to implement that recommendation of the Matthew-Skillington Report which said that architects in the PSA should be called architects and not P and IOII.
§ Mr. FreesonArchitects and other professional staff in PSA are given gradings within the Civil Service Professional and Technology Group for purposes of pay and conditions of service. Proposals for other titles for purely Departmental purposes which give prominence to the individual's profession are currently under consideration.
§ Mr. Michael Lathamasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether the Directorate-General of Design Services and the PSA as a whole have now abandoned the practice of using drawing offices not forming integral parts of design teams, and the use of partial commissions, both of which were described by the Matthew-Skillington Report is largely discredited practices.
§ Mr. FreesonAction is being taken to ensure close integration of the work of drawing offices and design teams. It has not been possible to abandon the use of partial commissions, but when work is put out to consultants the achievement of good design is always a major consideration in arranging the commission.