THOUGHT LEADERSHIP PROJECT
MHCLG Summer School
Ekkist were asked by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to speak as part of the ‘Summer School’ series of talks, which were established to educate and influence policy makers on latest best-practice from a range of experts in the built environment.
The session was designed to set out the importance of healthy buildings with regards to the overall health of the UK population, and explored some of the challenges the industry is currently facing in terms of delivering best-practice healthy places. Key points from the session were:​
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It is tempting to think that in 2022 all new buildings are high quality and healthy for people using them
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However, data shows that across a range of metrics, there is still a substantial gap between the legal or statutory minimums and best-practice when it comes to healthy buildings
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Unless this gap is addressed, we risk creating two tiers of buildings for two separate parts of society: healthy ‘elite’ buildings for high earners, and ‘designed to legal standards’ buildings for everybody else
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However, the positive take-away is that we are now seeing more funders, developers, designers and end-users engaging with the concept of health-led design, showing that there is a clear appetite for places to be built to a higher standard