Cabe was set up by the Government in 1999 to advise about architecture, urban design and public space, and Simmons has been chief executive since 2004. He’s in demand. We squeeze our interview in between his appointments at Westminster — a meeting of the Thames Gateway Strategic Partnership and a chat with an MP about school design. On our way into the restaurant he is accosted by a group of diners — people from the British Property Federation, he explains, who he met last week.

Evidently, there are some major hurdles to be overcome. A recent Cabe audit of the Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, for example, found that half the schools had poor or mediocre standards of design. “It’s basic stuff,” Simmons notes. “Like they hadn’t provided enough ventilation, so they had to drill holes in the walls.”

Two audits of housebuilders turned up similar results, he says, and he’s critical of developers who don’t consider the impact of buildings on the community. “We’re often asked ‘what right have you got to interfere in the design of our building?’ and we say ‘because it’s our building too’. ”

But Simmons is generally upbeat about the private sector. He points to a very positive Cabe programme, where some big housebuilders have established design champions.

How influential is Cabe? “We’re an advisory body. We advise developers, but we also advise local councils so we are quite influential. It’s quite unusual for councils to disagree with us.” And central government? “I’m reasonably hopeful,” he says, citing Jim Knight, the Minister of State for Schools, who has said that the Government, should, after all, listen to its own advisers.

But the dearth of public building in recent years hasn’t helped Cabe to get its message across. “(The public sector is) doing it for the first time. So getting it to understand that . . . it’s about trying to provide places and buildings that work well and look attractive . . . people seem to have this barrier that good design is about employing Richard Rogers,” Simmons says. “It might be, but there’s only one of him.”

His answer is everyone signing up to “good functional places that work well”. Education is key, he adds. In October, Cabe launches a scheme called How Places Work, to teach schoolchildren about design. And a recent initiative encourages people to nominate Britain’s worst-designed buildings. The response has been good, Simmons says, but disappointingly, an overall winner will not be announced. Simmons would rather use examples of good design to inspire, and he’s hopeful there will be plenty in the future.

Cabe has a strategic role in several big projects, including the Olympic Games and the regeneration of the Thames Gateway. “We got very frustrated with people saying that it’s a dump. There are some bits that are not very attractive but you’ve also got places like Greenwich,” he says.

Simmons has a solid track record. He trained as a planner and has worked on regeneration schemes in London’s Docklands and nearby Hoxton and Shoreditch. “People lack confidence and think that if they demand good design they’ll lose the developer,” he says. But never give up: “From my early experience I learnt that if you intervened, something good would happen.”

RICHARD SIMMONS FACT FILE

Born: February 17, 1953, in Manchester

Career: Senior planning officer in the Department of the Environment’s inner-cities directorate, 1984-86. Development manager, London Docklands Development Corporation until 1992. Chief executive, Dalston City Challenge, 1992-97. Appointed director of development and environment at Medway Council in 1997, before leaving in 2004 to become chief executive of Cabe.

He says: “Everyone is entitled to good design.”

Little-known facts: He is a qualified climbing instructor and some-time DJ. His signature song is the “dance classic” Rhythm is a Dancer by Snap.

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