An online Building for a Healthy Life self-assessment tool — know where your scheme stands
Work through all twelve Building for a Healthy Life considerations, watch your position build as you go, and finalise a dated Self-Assessment Certificate. Free to start; £450 + VAT to finalise.
Structured.
Every point the framework makes, under all twelve considerations, set out in our own words as a plain question about your scheme, with a link to the official text. The rule that turns your answers into a rating is ours, and we publish it in full.
Fixed price.
£450 + VAT. Free until you finalise — no scoping call, no waiting for a slot in someone’s diary.
Early.
You find the weak points while the drawings can still change — not in an officer’s report.
What you receive
A dated Self-Assessment Certificate recording your position across all twelve considerations, and a full Project Pack behind it.
Why teams use it
Design quality is where residential applications lose time. Objections arrive late, revisions are expensive, and the conversation happens on someone else’s terms.
Building for a Healthy Life gives that conversation a common structure — twelve considerations that planning authorities across England recognise. This tool lets a design team work through that structure properly, record what they find, and hold the result as a dated document.
Why this matters
What a design team is left holding at the end of it.
A structured record of design decisions.
Twelve considerations, every point the framework makes, and your team’s answer to each — held together in one place rather than spread across meeting notes.
Gaps found while the drawings can still change.
The free indicative preview shows where the scheme stands at any point, which is usually where a team finds something worth revisiting.
A result that is easy to circulate and discuss.
A dated certificate and a full pack, in a form you can send to a client, a colleague or a planning officer without explaining the format first.
Consistent documents, without building a report by hand.
Every assessment produces the same documents in the same shape, so two schemes can be read side by side.
A clear route to an independent view.
Where an outside opinion would help, an Independent Design Review Panel Assessment picks up from your completed self-assessment.
How it works
1. Assess.
Create a project and work through the twelve considerations at your own pace. Answers save as you go, on any device. Upload supporting drawings as you work.
2. See where you stand — free.
The indicative preview shows your position across all twelve considerations at any point, including before you pay. Revise what you can, then look again.
3. Finalise.
Pay £450 + VAT, lock the assessment, and receive your Self-Assessment Certificate and full Project Pack by email and in the app.
When you want an outside view
A self-assessment records your own team’s considered position. An Independent Design Review Panel Assessment brings an outside one: The Design Review Panel reviews your completed self-assessment and the material submitted with it, considers the scheme against the same twelve considerations, and issues its own Design Review Panel Certificate.
The Panel may agree with your self-assessment. It may not. Divergence is expected and normal — the two exercises are different, and that difference is the point.
The National Planning Policy Framework states that local planning authorities should encourage the appropriate use of design review and take into account its outcomes, including any design recommendations made by design review panels. Any weight given is a matter for the decision-maker.
Disclosure: The Design Review Panel and BHL Assessments Ltd are connected companies under common ownership. An Independent Design Review Panel Assessment is carried out by the Panel’s own reviewers; its findings are reached independently and are not contingent on any self-assessment outcome recorded in this tool or on the fee paid. How independence is protected →
Start with the free preview
Create a project, answer as much as you like, and see your position build. You pay only when you choose to finalise.
BHL Assessments Ltd is not the author of the Building for a Healthy Life framework. The framework is published by others and is publicly available. This site provides a tool for assessing schemes against it.