Design Council welcomes interim report from government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission

Design Council welcomes the interim report from the government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.

The interim report will be presented by the Commission today at 1.30pm, where Commissioners will present a summary of key findings. Design Council is pleased the report reflects many of the positions submitted in its evidence. 

In particular the emphasis on:

1. Place making over house building
2. Community empowerment 
3. The importance of sustainability and green infrastructure
4. The importance of design skills amongst planners and decision makers
5. The move towards a more inclusive approach involving the public earlier in in the planning process
6. The importance of national quality standards

Sarah Weir OBE, Design Council CEO:  
“There is much to welcome in the Commission's really bold and imaginative interim report. I am especially pleased to see a strong focus on true collaboration and much earlier community engagement, the emphasis on the value of holistic placemaking and the recognition that sustainability and green infrastructure needs to be at the heart of planning and design. The call for a greater emphasis on design skills in local authorities is particularly important and reflects our evidence to the Commission. Design Council is also ready and eager to play our role as national advisory body for Government, working closely with the Commission to help ensure consistently high standards of design nationally. This interim report has the clear potential to ensure an even wider impact can be felt across the country in the final report. We look forward to being a part of it.”

As government’s advisor on design, Design Council provides independent, practical and direct support to local authorities, property developers and their consultant teams to help enhance the quality of the built environment.  This comes in the form of design advice and guidance and includes design reviews and a design approach that enable a cross sector, systems approach to supporting better places to live.  As an authority in this field, Design Council have long argued that many new homes and neighbourhoods fail to meet the needs of their communities because design is not prioritised by planners and developers. In Design Council’s submitted evidence to the government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, we argued that design must be recognised as a golden thread running through the development and planning process, rather than being an afterthought. 

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