Last edited 20 Jan 2021

Design Advisory Panel

On 28 February 2015, the government announced a new Starter Homes initiative in England intended to give 100,000 first-time buyers under 40 a 20% discount on new homes. To ensure the high quality of these new homes, a Design Advisory Panel was established including architects Sir Terry Farrell and Sir Quinlan Terry, philosopher Roger Scruton and representatives from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), the Design Council and Create Streets.

At the time, Sir Terry Farrell said: “This panel has the potential to make a real difference. It builds on the recommendations of the Farrell Review, which highlighted the need for more proactive planning and better placemaking as we attempt to address the housing crisis, with radically higher priority given to landscape, sustainability and the public realm.”

On 27 March 2015, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) published ‘Starter Homes Design’, a set of design exemplars put together by the Design Advisory Panel to show what good quality starter homes could look like.

In February 2016, the RIBA reported that the Design Advisory Panel had been reconvened by the government, and its remit broadened to focus on three government policies:

The panel membership itself was also slightly changed.

Andrew Forth, Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the RIBA, said, “It’s a question of identifying what planning tools are out there that have worked well on occasion and would be welcomed by local communities. There are tools that have worked well, such as design codes which we support, but they have not been applied consistently,’