About
What is the Quality of Life Foundation?
The Quality of Life Foundation helps local communities, professionals and policy makers to plan, design, create and care for homes and neighbourhoods in ways that will benefit people’s health and wellbeing in the long term.
We carry out independent research, share evidence, and support organisations to implement best practice in their work. We do this because having a decent, affordable home in a safe, well-designed neighbourhood is the foundation of a happy, healthy life.
We are a charity and provide services through our trading subsidiary (which is wholly owned by the charity).
Why we exist
Our core belief
The problem
But there is a big problem with the way most homes are planned for and built in the UK: we don’t spend enough time thinking about the long term health and wellbeing impacts of the homes and neighbourhoods we build.
The cause
- We don’t listen enough to people in their specific local contexts to understand what it is that they need from their homes and neighbourhoods in order to live happy, healthy lives
- We don’t build enough homes and have sold off too much of our social housing without replacing it
- We rely too heavily on the private rented sector, which is poorly regulated and too often poorly managed
- Our panic around the sheer numbers of homes that need building has led us to create places that are not fit for the long term
- Too often we are not delivering the physical and social infrastructure that people need alongside the homes that do get delivered
- Local authority planning departments have been pulled apart, leaving insufficient resources to provide real direction or enforcement for a local area.
The solution
We need to understand the barriers that prevent us from creating homes and neighbourhoods that fulfil people’s health and wellbeing needs, and work out how to overcome them.
Policy makers at the local, regional and national levels must address the shortcomings of the existing system – revitalising planning departments, investing in decent, affordable homes across a mix of tenures, better regulating the private rented sector, and adding more accountability into the planning and development process.
And developers, housing associations, designers and architects must do more to create the homes and neighbourhoods that will support health and wellbeing in the long term. To do this, they must ask people what they need from their homes and neighbourhoods.
And they must really listen to the answers they’re given.
Join Us
Join our growing team
Changing the UK housing system will not be easy, and it will take time. But we are excited by the challenge and look forward to working with more like-minded individuals and organisations in the years ahead. You can join us on our mission in a number of ways.
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