The Building for Life tool consisted of 20 questions, or criteria,[1] to assess the design quality of new housing developments, resulting in a numerical score.
Living Streets endorsed the tool in 2021 and its logo will feature on the next edition of Building for a Healthy Life due for publication in 2022.
Uses for Building for Life include the following: In 2001 the director of the Civic Trust, Mike Gwilliam, approached the Home Builders Federation with an idea to showcase the best new housing.
The three organisations entered into a formal partnership and invited architect and urban designer Sir Terry Farrell to chair a panel of experts to take the initiative forward.
The Building for Life campaign was launched on 11 September 2001 with a manifesto, aiming to promote design excellence and showcase best practice in the house building industry; understand the needs and aspirations of home buyers; and identify barriers to good design whilst campaigning to remove them.
At a meeting on 13 December 2001, Design for Homes became an advisor to the partnership in recognition for the considerable time and effort that David Birkbeck and Richard Mullane had contributed to the initiative.
These 20 questions were eventually published as the Building for Life criteria[1] in July 2003, following input from the Civic Trust's Liz Wrigley and CABE's Alex Ely.
English Partnerships adopted Building for Life for use as a standard in September 2005, requiring proposals for development on land they owned to achieve 14 out of the 20 criteria at tender disposal stage.
[17] In April 2007, the Housing Corporation published its design and quality standards,[18] which incorporated Building for Life as the assessment method for the external environment.
All new homes which received grant funding through the National Affordable Housing Programme were required to achieve 12 out of the 20 criteria.
The Housing Corporation also carried out an audit of the quality of affordable homes built prior to the adoption of the new standards.
[20] In 2008, the Department for Communities and Local Government commissioned CABE to check on progress and provide an independent view of quality in the Thames Gateway.
In 2008, the government requested that local authorities use Building for Life to measure progress in improving design quality.
In 2010, Homes and Communities Agency set out in their proposed core housing design and sustainability standards consultation plans to make achieving 14/20 of the Building for Life criteria mandatory.
Schemes were entered for Building for Life awards each spring by developers, housing associations, architects or planners.
Entries were formally assessed against the 20 Building for Life criteria and all those achieving 14 or more received either a silver or gold standard.
Since 2008, the Building for Life awards judging panel included Nick Raynsford MP, Lynsey Hanley, John Calcutt, David Pretty, Yolande Barnes, Steven Carr and Jane Briginshaw.
Does the development provide (or is it close to) community facilities, such as a school, parks, play areas, shops, pubs or cafes?
The National Planning Policy Framework was part of a series of wider government interventions intended to stimulate house building and economic recovering following the global credit crisis.
The Design Council CABE logo was subsequently removed from Building for Life 12 as the organisation directed its efforts into an alternative quality tool for new homes.
In 2015, the Welsh Government and the Design Commission for Wales published Adeliladu am Oes 12 Cymru: Arwydd o le da I fyw ynddo.
Key policy changes provided a further opportunity to promote active travel through Building for a Healthy Life, in particular: Department for Transport (2020) Gear Change: a bold new vision for cycling and walking, HMSO and Department for Transport (2020) Cycle Infrastructure Design, LTN 1/20.
In February 2021, the government referenced Building for a Healthy Life in the draft of the latest edition of the National Planning Policy Framework.
Back of pavement, front of home Building for a Healthy Life is a design process structure, not a scoring system.
Ambers may be justified where circumstances are beyond a developer's control such as third part land ownership or constraints imposed by local highway authorities.
This followed a decision by the authors of Building for Life 12 to not permit the use of their methodology on the basis of concerns about site selection and the robustness of auditing.
The authors closely monitor the use of the methodology and have supported its use in ways that advance the quality of new residential development and reflect a spirit of partnership working and cooperation with the house building industry.
The Place Alliance audit presented conclusions on the design performance of English regions despite the limited sample base.
The East Midlands region was classified as one of the worst performing regions despite considerable improvements in design quality being made in the planning administrative areas of North East Derbyshire, Nottingham City, Chesterfield, Leicester City, South Derbyshire and North West Leicestershire.
Birkbeck, D. and Kruczkowski, S. (2015) Building for Life 12: the sign of a good place to live, Nottingham Trent University.