Design Nottingham

Improving new housing

The poor quality of design in new housing schemes is an issue in Nottingham and throughout the UK and central Government is now placing increasing importance on the benefits of good design.

In 2007 the Government's design watchdog - the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) - carried out a survey of new housing developments across the country and put the Midlands Region bottom in their national league table of housing design quality.

Design 08 therefore concentrated on raising the standard of design and ensuring the delivery of good quality housing in the City. The City Council adopted Building for Life as a tool for assessing the quality of housing schemes and ran a series of workshops aimed at improving housing design quality. These included:

• Seminar on design quality by Peter Stewart
• Officer training on Manual for Streets
• Retrospective reviews of completed housing schemes.