Terms of sale

These terms apply when you buy anything from us. Please read them before you pay; by finalising a self-assessment or confirming a Panel assessment, you agree to them.

We may update these terms. The version that applies to your purchase is the version published when you paid, and we keep previous versions available on request.

Previous versions. Each purchase records the version that applied to it. Those versions remain available here:

• Version 1.0 — published 29 July 2026, superseded by version 1.1.

If you are buying as a consumer rather than for a business, section 20 sets out rights you have in addition to everything below. Nothing in these terms removes them.

We, us, our

— BHL Assessments Ltd.

You

— the person or organisation buying.

The tool

— our online Building for a Healthy Life self-assessment application.

The framework

— Building for a Healthy Life, May 2026 edition, published on GOV.UK by others. We are not its author.

Self-assessment

— an assessment of a scheme that you carry out yourself using the tool.

Self-Assessment Certificate

— the document we issue recording a finalised self-assessment.

Project Pack

— the accompanying record of every answer, comment and uploaded document.

Panel assessment

— an Independent Design Review Panel Assessment or Premium Independent Design Review Panel Assessment.

The Panel

— The Design Review Panel, a trading name of Design Review Ltd.

Design Review Panel Certificate

— the document the Panel issues on completing a Panel assessment.

We provide a tool for assessing a scheme against the framework, and we arrange Panel assessments.

We are not the author of the framework, and nothing we issue is official Building for a Healthy Life certification, accreditation, commendation or validation. Nothing we issue is approved or endorsed by the framework’s authors, by Design for Homes, by the Design Network or by Homes England.

Nothing we or the Panel provide is professional advice, and nothing guarantees planning permission or any other approval.

You need an account, and you sign in by a link we email you rather than a password. Keep access to that mailbox secure: anyone who can read your email can reach your account.

One person or organisation per account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has access.

You must be 18 or over.

Creating a project, working through the considerations, uploading documents and viewing your indicative result are free. Nothing is charged and nothing is committed until you choose to finalise.

Finalising one self-assessment of one scheme costs £450 plus VAT. The price shown at the point you finalise is the price that applies.

When you finalise, three things happen at once: you make your declaration, we take payment, and we issue your Self-Assessment Certificate and Project Pack.

A finalised self-assessment is locked and cannot be edited. This is deliberate, and it is what makes the certificate worth having — a document that could be quietly altered afterwards would mean nothing. Please satisfy yourself that the assessment reflects your scheme before you finalise. The free indicative preview exists so that you can.

You confirm when you finalise that the answers and comments are your own considered assessment, and that the person named as declarant is authorised to make it.

Your Self-Assessment Certificate and Project Pack arrive by email and can be downloaded from your account.

The content is yours — your answers, your comments, your documents. The format, layout and wording of the documents themselves remain ours. You may use, copy and share your certificate and Project Pack freely in connection with the scheme they relate to, including in a planning application. You may not present them as anything other than what they are, or alter them.

We keep your documents available to download for ten years from finalisation. Please keep your own copies as well.

Before you finalise nothing has been charged, so there is nothing to refund.

After you finalise we do not refund because you have changed your mind, because the result was not the one you hoped for, or because your scheme has since changed.

We take that position because of how the tool works rather than to be difficult. You work through the whole assessment free of charge. You see your indicative position across all twelve considerations free of charge, before you pay anything. You then choose to finalise, and the certificate is issued to you at that moment. There is no point at which you commit money without already knowing what you are buying and what it will say. If the result is not what you wanted, the assessment has done its job: it has told you something about your scheme.

If your scheme changes, section 13 sets out the revise-and-resubmit route — a further self-assessment of a materially revised scheme costs you nothing.

We refund without argument when we have failed. If we take payment and do not deliver your documents, or deliver documents that are wrong because of a fault in our system, or the tool loses work you had properly saved, tell us. We will put it right by reissuing, and if we cannot put it right we will refund you in full. You do not have to persuade us that this is fair, and we do not treat it as a matter of goodwill: it is what you are entitled to, and section 20 preserves that whether you buy as a business or as a consumer.

Because a finalised assessment cannot be edited, we correct factual errors by issuing a corrected version alongside a record of the correction, rather than by changing the original. Tell us what is wrong and we will look at it.

This covers genuine errors — a mistyped address, a document that failed to attach. It does not cover changing your answers, which would be a new assessment.

We work to keep the tool available and your work saved as you go, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. We may take it down for maintenance, and will avoid doing so without notice where we reasonably can.

A Panel assessment is a review by The Design Review Panel of your completed self-assessment and the material submitted with it, considered against the same twelve considerations, concluding in the Panel’s own Design Review Panel Certificate.

Your agreement is with us. We contract with you, and we commission the Panel to carry out the review. The Panel’s own terms apply between us and the Panel; your rights are against us, and you deal with us throughout.

The Design Review Panel and BHL Assessments Ltd are connected companies under common ownership. A 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 that independence is protected is set out on our About and governance page, and we would rather you read it before you buy than afterwards.

Turnaround runs from the latest of our confirming your booking, cleared payment, and our receiving everything the Panel needs to carry out the review. Expedited feedback is subject to Panel availability and is confirmed — or declined, with that part of your payment cancelled or refunded — as part of our confirmation of your booking.

You can book and pay for either service online, from a finalised self-assessment in your account. If you would rather talk something through first, you can make an enquiry instead — an enquiry places no order and takes no payment.

Booking and payment. You book online from a finalised self-assessment in your account. Payment is collected by Direct Debit, and one authorisation covers the booking. Your booking is an offer to purchase; our confirmation, below, is our acceptance of it.

We confirm every booking within 3 working days. Before any reviewer is approached, we check that the scheme is one the Panel can properly review — its scale and complexity, any conflict of interest, Panel availability, and any expedited turnaround you have asked for. We aim to confirm well within the 3 working days, and Direct Debit timing means this normally happens before your payment has even been collected.

If we cannot take your scheme, we decline the booking. We tell you plainly why, the booking is cancelled, and your payment is cancelled before collection or refunded in full — whichever applies, you pay nothing, and no administration fee is charged.

Cancelling before we confirm. You can cancel at any time before our confirmation at no charge — your payment is cancelled or refunded in full.

Cancelling after confirmation, before we commission the Panel. There is a period between our confirming your booking and our instructing the Panel, during which no reviewer has been asked to do anything. If you cancel in that period, we refund you in full less an administration fee of £250 plus VAT, which covers the booking and payment handling.

Once we have commissioned the Panel, the fee is non-refundable and the booking cannot be postponed. From that point volunteer reviewers have been convened and time has been committed to your scheme, and that commitment cannot be recovered. We will tell you when we commission the Panel, so you always know which side of that line you are on.

Expedited feedback is refunded in full if we accept it and then fail to deliver within 7 working days, whatever the reason. The underlying assessment fee is unaffected and the review continues.

The Panel may disagree with your self-assessment. It may reach a different conclusion against any consideration, and where it does, the Panel’s conclusion is what its certificate records. Divergence is expected and normal — the two exercises are different, and an outside view that always agreed would be worth nothing. A Panel conclusion you did not want is not a fault in the service and is not a ground for a refund.

If the Panel reaches conclusions you would like to address, our pricing page sets out the revise-and-resubmit route: a further self-assessment of a materially revised scheme at no charge, and a further Panel assessment at the published revised-scheme fee, around 30% less than the original fee. That is open to anyone revising a scheme, whatever the first outcome.

If you are a consumer. Most of our customers buy in the course of a business, but if you are a consumer you may have a legal right to cancel within 14 days. At checkout you ask us to begin the service within that period, and you acknowledge that once the service has been fully performed the right to cancel is lost. Section 20 sets out your consumer rights in full — nothing in this section reduces them.

Intellectual property in a Design Review Panel Certificate and any written feedback belongs to Design Review Ltd. You are granted a licence to use it in connection with the scheme it relates to, including in a planning application, and for no other purpose.

Panel feedback is opinion and suggestion given by volunteers. It is not professional advice, it does not guarantee planning permission, and there is no obligation on you, your design team or any local planning authority to follow it.

You are responsible for what you upload. By uploading, you confirm that you own it or have permission to use and share it for this purpose, and that sharing it with us — and, if you request a Panel assessment, with the Panel — does not breach anyone’s rights.

Please upload only what the assessment needs. Do not upload sensitive personal information about individuals, such as health or financial details; the assessment has no use for it.

We may remove material that appears unlawful or that we have no proper basis to hold, and we will tell you if we do.

We keep uploaded documents for ten years from finalisation and then delete them. Large schemes are often in planning and delivery for many years, and the record stays available throughout. Your certificate and Project Pack are unaffected.

Please do not attempt to access another customer’s data, interfere with the service, copy or resell the framework content we present, or use automated means to extract it in bulk. We may suspend an account being used this way.

How we handle your information — what we hold, who processes it, where it is held, how long we keep it and your rights — is set out in our privacy notice, which forms part of these terms.

One point belongs here as well as there: if you request a Panel assessment, your self-assessment, the material you uploaded and your contact details pass to The Design Review Panel, which is a separate organisation with its own privacy policy. That is what carrying out the review requires, and requesting one is your instruction to us to do it.

We are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss that is not foreseeable, or for business losses such as lost profit, lost business, lost opportunity or damage to reputation.

Our total liability for any assessment is limited to the fees you paid for it.

We do not limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Neither we nor the Panel accept liability to any local planning authority, applicant or other third party arising from an assessment or a certificate.

Tell us — info@bhlassessments.co.uk. Our complaints procedure sets out how we handle it, the timescales, and the two senior Panel chairs who consider complaints that concern our Panel Manager personally or a Panel assessment arranged through us.

If you are buying as a consumer rather than for business purposes, you have rights that these terms do not affect.

The tool and any Panel assessment must be provided with reasonable care and skill, and the documents we supply must be as described and of satisfactory quality. If they are not, you may be entitled to a repeat performance, a repair or a refund.

Cancellation. You normally have 14 days to cancel a distance contract. Because your certificate is issued immediately on payment, we ask you to confirm at the point of finalising that you want us to supply it straight away and that you understand you lose that cancellation right once we do. If you would rather keep the 14 days, do not finalise — your work is saved and you can come back.

This does not affect section 8: if we fail to deliver, or deliver something faulty, you get your money back.

For Panel assessments booked online, the checkout records your express request for us to begin within any cancellation period, and your acknowledgement that the right to cancel is lost once the service is fully performed. If you cancel while a cancellation right remains, we may deduct an amount proportionate to what has already been done, as the law allows.

We may end your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms; you may close your account at any time. Sections that by their nature should survive — 7, 14, 18 and 20 — do.

Neither of us is responsible for failing to perform because of something genuinely beyond our control, though this does not excuse payment for work already done.

You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our agreement.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction.