We all know the UK faces some major housing challenges. We have a government and an industry with ambitions to deliver a huge number of new homes over the next few years. This is a fantastic place to be. However, as the Designing Tomorrow’s Housing campaign rightly points out, there is a risk that this push for more homes creates tension between quantity and quality, that we end up making the age-old mistake of delivering a quantity of ‘units’ rather than quality places for people to live.

But what do we really mean when we talk about ‘quality’? Who decides what ‘good quality’ is, and how it might be incorporated into the new homes and neighbourhoods we hope to see delivered?

That’s where the Quality of Life Foundation’s Resident Reviews come in. A unique form of post-occupancy evaluation focused on homes and neighbourhoods, our Resident Reviews provide an in-depth, evidence-based picture of what quality means through the eyes of the people who actually live in the places we’re building. And to us it’s clear: these are the voices we need to hear from when deciding how to embed quality into the delivery of 1.5 million new homes.

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