{"id":14438,"date":"2015-02-23T15:31:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T15:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adjacentgovernment.co.uk\/?p=14438"},"modified":"2015-06-03T15:22:03","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T15:22:03","slug":"good-urban-design-could-help-the-housing-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/planning-construction-news\/good-urban-design-could-help-the-housing-crisis\/14438\/","title":{"rendered":"Good urban design could help the housing crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Slaughter, Director of External Affairs at the Home Builders\u00a0Federation (HBF) details how \u2018Building for Life\u2019 represents good urban design, and could help with the national housing crisis\u2026<\/span><\/h2>\n

The design of housing developments is rightly of interest to all those involved in or affected by the delivery of new housing \u2013 communities, local authorities, and of course house builders themselves. This interest is naturally growing as we seek to increase the supply of new homes significantly to tackle our national housing crisis.<\/p>\n

At the same time, however, everyone will have their own view of what constitutes good design in a particular location and this means there is inevitably a degree of subjectivity involved in reaching decisions. How are we therefore to encourage and support good urban design in a way that is responsive to local context while being practical for house builders to implement?<\/p>\n

For HBF and its partners \u2013 Design for Homes and Design Council Cabe \u2013 a large part of the answer lies in the use of Building for Life 12 (BFL12) Building for Life 12 is a distillation of many years\u2019 experience of working to encourage good design. The original Building for Life was established in 2000 with the aim of capturing the generally accepted principles of urban design for residential development in one place and in a way that could apply to a wide range of different housing projects.<\/p>\n

It comprised 20 principles broadly covering issues from environment and community to design and construction. The government recognised Building for Life as the national standard for good design and a system of \u201cawards\u201d was initiated for projects that were judged to have achieved the majority of the 20 principles \u2013 silver for 14 and gold for 16 or more. This was effective in raising awareness of good design principles and providing recognition for well-designed developments. There were, however, concerns over time that some of the 20 BfL criteria were more a product of current policy objectives than the enduring principles of urban design and that BfL was not as accessible as it should be to local communities, councils and the full range of the industry.<\/p>\n

This led the BfL partners to rethink their approach, with a particular stimulus to doing so being the current government\u2019s promotion of localism in planning, including neighbourhood plans, at the same time as reinforcing the importance of good design in the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). In this context we worked with local authorities, design experts and community representatives as well as industry practitioners to make sure that Building for Life was fit for purpose for the new planning regime. We concluded we could rationalise the key elements of good design into 12 principles and express these in a way that was far easier to grasp for non-professionals without detracting from the robustness of Building for Life.<\/p>\n

The 12 principles are made up of 4 questions in each of 3 chapters:<\/p>\n