CSD cleared to set up register of chartered designers

The Queen has approved an order amending the CSD’s royal charter, granting it the power to award the title of Chartered Designer and to maintain a register of those designers.

The CSD says it will now consult those inside and outside the design sector before deciding how to set up and maintain the charter. This consultation period will run until summer 2012 ‘enabling pathways to Chartered Designer [status] to be established later that year’, the CSD says.

CSD president Chris Ramsden says, ‘The new powers place the society in the enviable position of not only setting standards for professional practice in design but also monitoring and regulating that practice.’

He adds, ‘As with all power there comes responsibility and the society must now set to work determining the manner in which this power may be exercised for the benefit of the design profession, all who aspire to enter it and those who benefit from the provision of design.’

The CSD filed an application to Government to approve a system of professional certification for designers in 2009 [https://www.designweek.co.uk/designer-certification-scheme-up-for-government-approval/3009140.article].

It has since been through a number of steps in order to make the plan reality, the most recent being a period of internal consultation on the plan [https://www.designweek.co.uk/csd-in-final-stage-of-register-plan/3026673.article].

CSD chief executive Frank Peters says, ‘Work to achieve Chartered Designer status commenced as far back as 2001 and during the past decade various options for the delivery of the status have been considered in consultation with others in the design sector.’

He adds, ‘Having now been granted the power to set up such a register the Society is anxious to consider the views of as wide a spectrum as possible before determining how it will set up, maintain and operate the register.’