

We are a charity committed to creating greater accountability and encouraging more sustainable models of development by making health and wellbeing central to the way we create and care for our homes and neighbourhoods.
We do this through research, community engagement and services, such as Quality of Life Mapping, Strategy Review, Training and Resident Review.
What is quality of life?
We define quality of life as a person’s physical, social and psychological wellbeing.
We believe that if we can improve the built environment – the buildings and neighbourhoods where people live – then we can raise people’s quality of life.
Which is good for people and good for the planet.
There is currently too much short-term thinking in the housing sector and government at a local and national level, which has led to public apathy and distrust in developers and councils. We believe the solution is long-term thinking that prioritises people’s quality of life, by which we mean their physical, social and psychological wellbeing.
We want to create change in the way the housing industry acquires, plans, builds and manages new homes and communities to improve people’s quality of life.
The Quality of Life Foundation was set up by design champion and industry leader, Professor Sadie Morgan OBE. She became frustrated with our inability to create homes and communities that are built for the long-term at scale. She felt there was a need to focus the debate around people, their health and wellbeing, and to involve both developers and the general public in how their homes and communities are created.
After a series of conversations with the late Tony Pidgley, CBE, Chairman of founding partner, Berkeley Group, she set up the Foundation as a space for those both inside and outside the built environment industry to focus on what people think and feel about their homes and communities, and work out ways that they might be improved.
To start with, we carried out research to find out what affects people’s quality of life. We used this evidence to build a framework to demonstrate how improvements to our homes and communities can improve our quality of life. Now we are looking at ways to add to increase the evidence base for making health and wellbeing more central, and providing services to provide general uplift and create greater accountability.
Throughout, we have sought ways to engage with the public to understand sentiments at a community level, and to create a system whereby the public can assess individual developments based on its impact on their quality of life.
We will work with developers, local authorities and housing associations to demonstrate how adopting our framework will create long-term social and economic benefits.
The Quality of Life Foundation is a charitable company, registered with the Charity Commission (charity number 1198624). As part of our development, we have also started a trading subsidiary (QOLF Trading Ltd) through which we can provide products and services, the profits of which will go back into the Foundation’s work.
We have a Board of Trustees, whose professional specialisms span design, development, health and wellbeing policy and planning, sustainability, local authority direction, social value and academic research.
Her career includes a position held at placemaking charity as an advisor in design research and community led design practice, including asset mapping, meaningful engagement, and up-skilling stakeholders. She also worked for a sustainable architectural practice and design collective as an engagement consultant and participatory researcher, spanning the redevelopment of derelict buildings and spaces, a visitor centre eco-build, and a cultural building retrofit.