Sarah Considine to head up London Mayor’s Design Unit

Sarah Considine, programme manager for the GLA’s Good Growth by Design programme since 2017, will lead the new department.

The Design Unit has emerged from a restructure of GLA teams announced last year, from existing elements of teams that scrutinise planning applications and from the Good Growth by Design programme.

The stated aim of the unit is to ‘drive excellence in design across, and beyond, the GLA Group’.

It will do this through a combination of planning powers, advocacy and commissioning, a paper outlining proposals for the department said.

The head of the unit, with a £75,750 salary, is the only newly created role under the restructure.

Before joining the Good Growth by Design programme, Considine was a senior project officer for in the GLA’s regeneration team.

She also worked as a project officer for Design for London, and was earlier the co-founder of the We Heart the Suburbs initiative that celebrated overlooked suburbia and examined how it would change.

In her new role, Considine will be tasked with overseeing the development of strategies to ‘promote world-class architecture, sustainability, viability and inclusive design in London’s buildings, public spaces and urban fabric’, as well as managing design reviews, the operation of the Architecture + Urbanism Framework and the wider Good Growth by Design programme.

The job advert posted for the leader of the unit earlier this year, said the successful candidate would need to have extensive experience in urban design, architecture, planning or related experience, as well as good project management and communication skills.

They were also required to have experience or demonstrable ability to work at high level in a complex political environment and to command confidence.

The Mayor of London’s office said it was unable to comment on the appointment, due to purdah rules barring public bodies issuing statements in the run-up to elections.

In a statement last year, a spokesperson for the mayor said: ‘This new unit will bring together exciting elements from the London Plan and Growth Strategies Team and the Good Growth by Design Programme to build on a long culture of design excellence within the GLA.

‘The team will promote equality and inclusion in the built environment, as well as advocate for quality design in the sector.’