Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to implement his policy of placing beauty at the heart of the built environment.

Following our response to the report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, we are taking action to put beauty and placemaking at the heart of the planning and development process. We have outlined proposals for securing design quality in our White Paper, Planning for the Future and on 30 January, we published for consultation a revised National Planning Policy Framework to make beauty and placemaking strategic policies. The National Model Design Code provides guidance on creating local design codes and we are seeking views on this advice alongside the National Planning Policy Framework consultation. We also intend to create an Office for Place within the next year to champion design and beauty in the planning system and we have made a commitment to strengthen Homes England’s objectives to give greater weight to design quality.