Our Backing Beauty Commission is a campaign to put beauty, placemaking and community participation at the heart of local planning and wider public policy. Through conversations with national and local policymakers and officials, as well as professional planners and developers, the campaign will work towards achieving a culture change which would see higher priority given to the concept of beauty, as discerned by local people, in decisions about the future of places.

Our 2015 report, A Community Right to Beauty, argued for the restoration and democratisation of beauty in public policy. It featured on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, with Dame Fiona Reynolds, former Director General of the The National Trust, accompanied by a social media campaign which saw users share their favourite beautiful places. Backing Beauty aims to continue the conversation this report has started.

We believe the increasing political priority being given to housing is a significant opportunity to put visual appeal and conformity with community hopes for the look and feel of their area at the heart of any new development or regeneration. Backing Beauty will therefore call for further powers to be devolved to local authorities and communities, in the context of city devolution as well as existing schemes such as Neighbourhood Planning,

You can find out more about the campaign at its dedicated website, www.webackbeauty.org.uk, where you can also sign up for updates on the Commission’s progress and activity via its monthly newsletter, and see which organisations and individuals are supporting our campaign. You can also follow the Commission on Twitter and you can join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #webackbeauty.

For more information on the Commission, please contact Duncan Sim, Senior Policy and Projects Officer, on 020 3857 8317 or at duncan.sim@respublica.org.uk.