Labour Party pledges design standards for public buildings, savings on regeneration and moving health spending away from buildings

The Labour Party has committed itself to introducing minimum design standards for all publicly-funded buildings in its election manifesto published today.

However, the manifesto also talks about re-prioritising spending on health away from new buildings and in to front-line services, and making savings on regeneration spending.

The document, entitled 鈥淎 Future Fair for All鈥� says that the pilot launched last year to introduce minimum design standards in schools will be followed up with similar schemes in all other areas of publicly funded building work.

Since October all schools built under the BSF programme have had to be reviewed by a specially-convened design review panel. The prospect of rolling this out to other areas had been mooted in the 鈥淲orld Class Places鈥� report released last year, but the manifesto commitment means Labour is committing to expand the scheme following the experience of the schools pilot.

The manifesto says: 鈥淲e will continue to promote excellence in architecture and design, helping to foster civic pride and build world-class places in which people want to live and work. We have introduced new design standards for schools, to ensure the very best architecture and building design; we will extend these to all new government funded building programmes.

Other commitments in the manifesto include:

鈥� Working with housing associations to develop a 鈥渘ew form of affordable housing鈥� to 鈥渇ocus on enabling working people to rent an affordable home at below market rates while they build up an equity stake.鈥�

鈥� Targeted motorway widening programme

鈥� 40% of energy should come from low-carbon sources by 2020 through construction of nuclear, wind and clean coal power generation capacity

鈥� Make 鈥渟avings in regeneration funding and focus on tackling worklessness鈥�

鈥� Re-focus 鈥渙nce in a lifetime鈥� spending programme on hospitals on to 鈥減rimary and community services so that we rival the best healthcare systems in the world.鈥�

鈥� Outside of Heathrow airport, no further runway construction allowed

Labour's election manifesto

  • New affordable housing type

  • Won鈥檛 build any more runways outside heathrow

  • Targeted motorway widening

  • Health 鈥� refocus capital expenditure on primary and community services

  • Extending the design standards for schools to all new publicly funded buildings

  • 40% of energy from low carbon sources by 2020 鈥� reform regulation

  • Savings on regeneration

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