The Quality of Life Foundation team’s hopes for 2024

“As part of meaningful engagement, our code of practice principles sets out most of what I’d like to see change. However, my main wish here is to work with stakeholders across industries and sectors to build capacity and continuously improve engagement practices. 

“This is to ensure that this practice reflects the needs, values and aspirations of communities and is sustainable to ensure long-term positive impact on residents, their homes and their neighbourhoods.

“My wish for stewardship is for the industry to go beyond a ‘lip service’ commitment to ensure long-term health, community activation, and access for people to enjoy places. 

“By understanding and prioritising what’s important to a community and place, collaborative action will ensure that stewardship remains of value across generations and is adaptive to the people to live, work and play there. 

“Whether this action is an activity, initiative or programme, a strategy with measures and management plans, or compliance, policies and assessments, community engagement and involvement is key to building collaborative participation and decision making around the care and management of places. I hope to see more of this happening in 2024.”

Hani Salih, Senior Researcher:

“As we’ve continued to build out the Foundation’s goals and think about making a bigger difference, we’ve been thinking a lot about how the industry thinks about its impact on society and the environment. 

“My hope for 2024 is that as an industry we delve deeper and consider social impact as the main lens through which we measure the success of built interventions in our industry, prioritising social impact measures over social value metrics. 

“This would help us all take a longer term approach to how we think about the impact that our developments and regeneration have on our homes, neighbourhoods and environment. Importantly it would also shift the emphasis of impact away from business and economic benefits and more towards societal benefits.”

Jordan Whitewood-Neal, Researcher:

“My wish for 2024 is for the value, importance, and complexity of disability to be better acknowledged and addressed in the design and development of homes and neighbourhoods. 

“Housing has often been thought of in a practical sense, guided by standards and outdated ideas for how we might live in a home and with each other. Currently the English Building Regulations only require developers to build visitable homes, homes which only provide the basics of access. 

“But this does not account for family, friends, change of circumstance or flexibility. A move towards Lifetime homes and neighbourhoods which would put disability, ageing, and longevity first would provide a far more caring built environment. 

“The lives of disabled people can be vastly improved by homes and community infrastructures which put principles of comfort, joy, spontaneity and abundance at their heart, and these are the principles which I would like to see adopted at every level.”

Emma Cooke, External Affairs Manager:

“My wish for 2024 is that the promotion of health equity is written into national planning policy, whether that’s through the National Planning Policy Framework, National Development Management Policies or by some other means.

“We know all too well that planning has a significant role to play in promoting health, through shaping its wider determinants. But while there is good practice in pockets of the country where local authorities are incorporating public health into their planning teams, policies and processes, this is not yet the norm. Nor is the prioritisation of health and wellbeing outcomes in local plans. 

“Whatever government is in power this year, it’s time for national policy to recognise the key role that planning has to play in improving the health of the population.”

Ed Gritten, Engagement and Insights Officer:

“My hope for the year ahead is for more hope! There’s still a perception that the changes we need to see in the world today are too costly or inhibiting to enact. But it’s just not the case and often exactly the reverse. 

“It would be great to see more ownership and leadership with ambitious targets and even top-down legally binding legislation, supported by a collective sense of hope for a better future. 

“We have seen that policies such as biodiversity net gain, despite having their hiccups, have been largely welcomed. More of course can be done to secure access to nature, access to social infrastructure, efficient homes and support for marginalised groups (to name just a few). And with more hope, these challenges will quickly become the opportunities they are”.

So there we are – that’s what we’re all hoping for this year. We’ve also set out our policy priorities, highlighting what we think the next government needs to focus on.

With a some hard work and a sprinkling of the hope that Ed is wishing for, perhaps we’ll see at least some of this come to fruition in the year ahead.