When it comes to levelling up places and neighbourhoods across the country, the evidence is clear that good design helps communities to flourish. Design Codes are an essential tool for driving up the standards of design - by setting clear visual and numerical standards, based on community preference, local councils can both facilitate new development and ensure it helps make places more healthy, popular and beautiful.
This why we announced the Design Code Pathfinder programme in March 2022, through which we awarded 25 areas in England a share of £3 million to help them set their own standards for design locally - design codes using the National Model Design Code at different scales, including site specific codes, authority-wide codes, and codes for new garden villages. They submitted their draft codes at the end of May.
After an initial event in July, this programme is a chance for the Office for Place to share the programme's learnings with a wider audience. While we touched on some of these topics at the July event, these sessions will dive deeper into important themes and areas of coding identified during the programme.
The programme will run from late September until early December. There will be 6 sessions, delivered online via Microsoft Teams, and each session in the programme will be run twice in total.
We intend for these sessions to be pragmatic and useful, offering attendees ideas and practical suggestions to help them in the development and application of their own design codes.
