“People are able to say that they don’t like a building,” he continues, “but they aren’t able to say why. People need to become more confident in their tastes, as they are in other matters. You say ‘what don’t you like about it?’ and they say ‘there’s something wrong with the top.’ ‘You ask ‘what’s wrong with the top?’ and they say ‘it’s too heavy.’ You say ‘what’s heavy about it’ and they say ‘there’s too much lead on the roof in relation to the brick’. Then they have articulated their dislike. The more people can do this, the more they can make a difference to the debate around the sort of buildings that are going up.”

He talks about the fact that we are living in a period in which a number of new developments are being built, and I tell him that there is a plan for 800 new homes to be constructed in Lewes. “When things start going up in your back yard, it helps people to articulate their tastes,” he says. “I’ve recently been to Bury St Edmonds, where there is a huge development planned. People have become passionate about the issue, and they have become more articulate about what they want and they don’t want. It’s all very good telling planners that you don’t like a projected building, but that means nothing unless you are able to describe what you would like in its place.” So is the situation, I ask him, getting better? “Things are inching forward. People under forty are generally more able to articulate their feelings about architecture. Unfortunately it is generally people over forty who plan and pay for new developments.” AL