Places Briefing #5
UK Housing, Green cities, cities and climate change, design codes for health and wellbeing, policy evaluation, community funding from renewal energy
There’s a green theme to this edition of Places Briefing reflecting the focus of the most recent posts on Policies for Places. It also includes a link to the latest edition of the Housing Review in the UK, and to an important new Government website for accessing policy evaluations.
Housing in the UK
The 33rd edition of this well-respected review has just been published. The 2025 Housing Review brings together the most important housing statistics for England (and its regions), Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It features over 200 charts and tables for those who need detailed information about housing policy and finance.
Its charts and tables include data about:
Homelessness and lettings
Housing investment by councils, housing associations and private investors
Housing stock and conditions
Household characteristics and incomes
Subsidies, tax reliefs and benefits
House prices and market trends
Public expenditure plans and the economy
Rents and revenue spending
Selected international housing trends
Access to tables and commentaries on key issues can be found here.
Green cities
Vilnius has been named the European Green Capital for 2025. The title recognizes the Lithuanian capital’s dedication to sustainability, climate action, and smart urban development. The recognition serves as motivation for Vilnius to go even further in its green ambitions and inspire other cities across Europe.
Vilnius sees its future as a hub for sustainable innovation. The city aims to enhance public transportation, expand green spaces, and promote eco-friendly mobility solutions. The city is also hoping to foster more green business and investments. By expanding green public transport, reducing car dependency, and making walking and cycling easier, the city has demonstrates that economic growth and environmental sustainability can go hand in hand.
Cities and Climate Change
A new city-led edition of the Journal of Climate Change Policy and Economy brings city practitioners and researchers into dialogue. This issue highlights how local governments are key actors in shaping climate governance and in generating the knowledge and approaches needed for cities to meet their climate goals at speed and scale. The articles in this issue are open access and highlight experience in many cities around the world in addressing climate change impacts.
Access the contents of this edition here.
Designing for health and wellbeing
The Quality of Life Foundation has recently published its design codes for health and wellbeing. Design Codes set expectations for the design of buildings, spaces, and places and helps create high-quality developments by providing a structured framework that planning authorities, developers, and communities can use to shape future growth. It sets out a policy framework and practical principles for incorporating health into design codes, complementing existing national guidance on placemaking. By prioritizing health and wellbeing within design codes, the aim is to help authorities
Address local health priorities through better urban design
Reduce health inequalities by improving access to green space, active travel, and healthy food
Create certainty for developers and decision-makers, ensuring that health-focused placemaking becomes standard practice.
Policy Evaluation
The UK Government has just launched its evaluation registry. All UK Government evaluations (some 1400 at the last count) are now accessible from a new searchable website. The Registry brings together all planned, ongoing, and complete evaluations of government policy into one accessible location, providing an invaluable tool for understanding “what works” in Government.
UK and Scotland Government departments conduct and commission hundreds of evaluations each year, but there has not previously been a single, unified place to access their findings. The Registry provides key information on the programmes and policies that have been or will be evaluated across government, the methodological approaches used in these evaluations, and summaries of evaluation findings.
The registry is a huge new resource for policy researchers and policymakers around the world.
Find more about using the registry here.
Economic Justification for Community Benefit Funds
An interesting new report from Biggar Economics about the payment of community benefits from projects for renewable energy transitions challenges the current basis for payments in the UK. It argues that natural capital is generally considered to be in common ownership, so the wider public should benefit from any “economic rents”. Thus local communities have a strong sense of ownership of local natural capital and so have a stronger claim to community benefit funding.
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I hope this collection of links to reports relevant to places and community development contains items of interest to you. Please get in touch if there are topics you would like to see covered in future editions.
John Tibbitt