Longest Running Awards
Launched in 1948 in the same sitting of Parliament as the NHS to reward better municipal post-war rebuilding, then opened up to market sale homes in 1960 by Harold Macmillan.
The only Awards promoted by all 5 major professional institutions – RICS, RIBA, RTPI, Landscape Institute and Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists.
A sharp rise in housing production from 200,000 new homes per annum in 1951 to 300,000 in 1954 put numbers before quality, unleashing the fashion for system built point blocks and leading to suspension of the Awards. When the quality of new schemes declined sharply, the Government was forced to look again to the Awards to protect its investment in new stock.
In recent years Homes England has introduced a Masterplanning award, which seeks to identify ideas that deliver higher quality places at pace, whether that is through a single development parcel or a number of phases within a larger development. Homes England has 2 judges on the panel and uses the awards to train its staff about routes for delivering quality.
