The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment is considering offering design review services to local authorities to help fill the vacuum left by the Government's decision to stop funding the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
Even though CABE survived the "quango bonfire", it fell foul of the spending review cuts at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Although the body has not been abolished, it has lost the bulk of its funds and is conducting a review of many of its programmes.
The spending decision prompted the Royal Institute of British Architects to urge the Government to look closely at how to deliver CABE's national design review work and its enabling work with local authorities.
Now the PFBE has stepped in to offer design review services to local authorities and developers through a network of architects and other designers on a fee for service basis, possibly introducing an element of competition.
"We'd look to recruit a balanced group, but unlike others, wouldn't rule out traditional architecture and urbanism," said Foundation chief executive Hank Dittmar.
"The Foundation's focus would be toward architecture and design in service of walkable, mixed use neighbourhoods, linked by streets and squares and parks. A design review panel formed by The Foundation would be slanted in favour of buildings and communities for people rather than for designers, and a design process that involves communities."
Mr Dittmar was a pioneer of smart growth in the United States and the Foundation would bring a strong urbanist element to such work, but Prince Charles' well-known opposition to the more extreme architecture of modernists is likely to generate some opposition from the profession.
"In an era of both localism and austerity, eliminating barriers to entry and design review from multiple sources might be a positive step forward, bringing costs down and loosening the grip of an architecture elite on planning and design decisions," said Mr Dittmar.
