A ‘Beauty In My Back Yard’ (BIMBY) Housing Toolkit has been launched by the Prince’s Foundation at an event involving Civic Voice (CV) and a variety of civic societies from across the UK.
Civic Voice writes:
Civic Voice, the national charity for the civic movement, and 12 civic societies from across the country were present at the launch event for Prince’s Foundation ‘Beauty In My Back Yard’ (BIMBY) Housing Toolkit yesterday. The event took place at Clarence House where the civic societies met His Royal Highness, Prince Charles to discuss the BIMBY Toolkit and what it can do for them.
The BIMBY Housing Toolkit has been developed to help empower communities to work with local authorities and developers to create a regional BIMBY Housing Manual. Speaking at the launch, Prince Charles, President of The Prince’s Foundation for Building Community explained that by using the BIMBY Housing Toolkit, communities will be able to directly influence the quality and beauty of new housing and influence the planning process in a positive rather than negative way.
Chair of Civic Voice, Freddie Gick who spoke at the launch event, stated ‘The launch of the BIMBY Housing Toolkit is great news for civic societies around the country who want to have more of a say in local planning and development. The BIMBY Housing Toolkit will help make their voice easier to hear where it matters most with local authorities and developers.
He went on to state ‘This is something which really resonates with our civic societies who are the most numerous participants in the planning system.’
Civic Voice executive director, Ian Harvey said ‘In our experience we know that communities will accept new development when they have had that opportunity to shape it. This was particularly demonstrated in the Civic Voice Design Awards which was launched this year. The awards saw 62 nominations from civic societies which shows how interested they are in good design. He went on to add ‘Bimby is the perfect partner to our awards and we look forward to many of our civic societies coming back and taking part in the project.’
Civic Voice will be working closely with the Prince’s Foundation and the 12 civic societies during the pilot period to help demonstrate the effectiveness of the toolkit.
View more information about BIMBY
View the news release
