Inclusive Environments

Inclusive environments are places that work better for everybody - whether that place is a school, office, park, street, care home, bus route or train station. An inclusive approach to planning, design and management is an opportunity to use creativity and lateral thinking to make places that reflect the diversity of people who want to use them. 

Inclusive environments are:

• Welcoming to everyone
• Responsive to people’s needs
• Intuitive to use
• Flexible
• Offer choice when a single design solution cannot meet all user needs
• Convenient so they can be used without undue effort or special separation and so that they maximise independence

Crucial to this is consultation with user groups, putting people who represent a diversity of age, ability, gender and community at the heart of the design process.

An ageing population

The UK’s population is getting older. Housing provision needs to change to meet this rapidly growing demand. The HAPPI report identified wider benefits from developing good quality housing for older people including a reduction in health and social care costs, as well as freeing up of much-needed family housing.

Stronger communities

The quality of the built environment has a significant role to play in tackling social disadvantage. Nine out of 10 people use and value parks and green spaces, but minority groups tend to have less local green space and it is of poorer quality.   

Economic growth

An estimated £5.3bn in lost earnings is due to people who have dropped out of the workforce to take on caring responsibilities for older or disabled friends and family. Lifetime Homes  is a policy tool that helps planners and other built environment professionals understand the benefits of helping maintain independence in their own homes.

Buying power

According to Disability Rights UK, 83% of disabled people had 'walked away' from making a purchase, unable or unwilling to do so.  The most important factor was inaccessible premises. Other important factors that discouraged disabled consumers from spending were poorly designed products and staff who were not disability confident, were rude or appeared prejudiced.

Regulation

The Equality Act, National Planning Policy Framework and guidance on building regulations all require new and existing buildings and spaces to provide access for all.

Inclusive design is the responsibility of everyone who works in the built environment: planners, those who commission new buildings and places, access consultants, designers, architects, engineers, surveyors, property owners and facilities managers. Our Inclusive Environments CPD training programme will encourage the UK’s highly skilled professionals to continue leading the way in building the most accessible and inclusive country in the world. 

We are developing a national network of designers and specifiers that can independently and collectively adapt and implement an inclusive, cross-disciplinary design approach to buildings and spaces. Working with specialists, industry leaders and practitioners, we aim to develop our content research into a ground-breaking, national programme. A specially appointed design team will work with these experts to translate this content into dynamic and engaging multimedia-based experiential training.

The training programme will:

• Increase awareness of inclusive design as standard practice at a national level
• Change the perceptions and aspirations of 600,000 designers and specifiers on inclusive design.

The training will be freely available online to support current and future working practices. Established by Design Council Cabe and supported by key professional institutes, it will have national reach and impact with the potential to be the leading training tool in the industry, connecting built environment experts across the UK.

To support the delivery of the online training, due to commence in early 2017, we are looking for partners to match-fund the initial government grant. Download our sponsorship brochure to find out how you can support this initiative. 

Those who sign up as sponsors for the Design Council Cabe’s inclusive design training, will join an influential panel of contributors. We would like to thank all of our partners for their support to date, particularly the Department for Communities and Local Government for funding the development of the resource hub, and David Bonnett Associates for generously gifting us their inclusive design library.

Building on previous Cabe work we have partnered with various organisations to build a hub of inclusive design best practice guidance for built environment professionals. It covers buildings and outdoor spaces, in all phases of development including planning, design and construction, right through to the management of those buildings and places. It is a collection of resources and we do not promote the use of one over the other.

Suggest a resource

If you would like to suggest a resource to be included in this hub, please send us a link and a short description explaining what the resource is, and who it applies to.