About us
BHL Assessments provides a dedicated online tool for structured Building for a Healthy Life self-assessment, with an optional route to independent assessment by The Design Review Panel (www.designreviewpanel.co.uk).
Independent and impartial
BHL Assessments Ltd does not carry out reviews itself, and is not the author of the Building for a Healthy Life framework.
Our role is to provide an online digital self-assessment tool and, if required, to facilitate independent and impartial review and certification from The Design Review Panel. Independent Design Review Panel Assessments are carried out by The Design Review Panel — an independent and impartial design review panel operating across England, whose reviews are conducted by volunteer professionals drawn from architecture, urban design, landscape, planning, transport and ecology.
That independence is the point: the Panel's conclusions are reached transparently, impartially, and on the scheme's merits.
“The local planning authority should:
a. Ensure that they have access to, and encourage the appropriate use of design review and other design tools and processes (especially for strategic sites and other significant projects), and take into account their outcomes, including any design recommendations made by design review panels”
Building for a Healthy Life is named in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's draft Design and Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance (published for consultation in 2026, and not yet in force) as a design assessment tool that "can support pre-application discussions".
Any weight given is a matter for the decision-maker.
From self-assessment to independent assessment
The process begins with a self-assessment, completed online by the applicant or design team. It gives land promoters, developers, designers and planning authorities a structured view of how a scheme measures against the twelve considerations of the Building for a Healthy Life framework.
Once a self-assessment is finalised, you may ask us to put the scheme and the material you provided before The Design Review Panel for an independent, impartial, multidisciplinary assessment. The Panel considers the scheme against the same twelve considerations and issues its own Design Review Panel Certificate, recording the Panel's professional opinion of the scheme's performance against the framework.
Why this matters
Design quality and placemaking are increasingly central to the planning process. A structured assessment, with the option of the Panel's independent certificate:
- demonstrates a commitment to high-quality design;
- provides transparency and accountability in decision-making;
- can support a planning submission by evidencing how design quality has been considered against national policy;
- offers a more efficient, lower-cost route than a full design review session, while retaining the Panel's independence and impartiality.
Our role
Our aim is to make structured Building for a Healthy Life assessment accessible, efficient and trustworthy. By combining a simple online tool with the independent and impartial judgement of The Design Review Panel, we help land promoters, developers, designers and planning authorities evidence placemaking quality in a way that decision-makers can weigh with confidence.
The 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 your assessment reaches the Panel
BHL Assessments Ltd contracts with you directly. When you request an Independent Design Review Panel Assessment, BHL Assessments Ltd commissions The Design Review Panel to carry it out. Your agreement is with BHL Assessments Ltd, and responsibility for the service sits there.
One practical consequence worth stating: because the arrangement works this way, BHL Assessments Ltd is not tied to a single review panel and could appoint a different one.
The safeguards
The reviewers are not paid.
Every panellist is a volunteer. Panellists receive no fee for a review, and no payment of any kind linked to what they conclude. Out-of-pocket expenses are reimbursed; nothing else. No one forming a judgement about your scheme has a financial interest in what that judgement is.
The owner takes no part.
Jonathan Braddick, who owns both companies, does not sit on any panel reviewing a scheme that has come through this tool, and takes no part in reaching or drafting its findings.
Panellists are bound by external standards.
All volunteer panellists adhere to their own professional codes of conduct, have agreed to adhere to the Nolan Principles of Public Life, and are bound by the Panel’s own Code of Conduct.
Conflicts must be declared.
Panellists are required to declare any conflict of interest, and are selected by The Design Review Panel in its usual way — the same process used for every other review it carries out.
Panellists are not named in advance.
In the interest of being demonstrably independent and impartial, the Panel does not reveal the identity of panellists before a review. Panellists introduce themselves at the start of a session, and confirmation of who took part is available afterwards on request.
Disagreement is expected.
The Panel reviews your self-assessment and may reach a different conclusion. Where it does, the Panel’s conclusion is what its certificate records. Nothing in the commercial arrangement requires the Panel to agree with the tool, and no one benefits from it doing so.
Complaints do not stop with us.
Our complaints procedure mirrors the Panel’s own. Where a complaint concerns the Service Manager personally, it is referred to a named alternative person rather than being handled by its subject.
What we do not claim
This tool is not an official Building for a Healthy Life product. Neither a Self-Assessment Certificate nor a Design Review Panel Certificate is official Building for a Healthy Life certification, accreditation, commendation or validation, and neither is issued, approved or endorsed by the framework’s authors, by Design for Homes, by the Design Network or by Homes England. Formal routes of that kind are operated by those organisations, not by us.
Neither certificate guarantees planning permission or any other approval. Panel feedback is opinion and suggestion given by volunteers, and does not constitute professional advice.
The framework
Building for a Healthy Life is published independently of us and is publicly available on GOV.UK. We claim no authorship of it, and we use none of its imagery, logos, cover art or quality marks. What we provide is a tool for assessing a scheme against it. The publication on GOV.UK