Episode 35 - Lobbying for Healthy Homes & Sustainable Building Design - Daniel Slade Policy & Projects Manager, TCPA, and Cat Hoad - Interior Design Declares Steering Committee Member

This year, 2022, Quiet Mark celebrates 10 years. Our origins, however, stem back much further, to 1959, when The Noise Abatement Society (NAS) was founded by the entrepreneurial businessman John Connell OBE. He believed that being exposed to excessive noise profoundly affected health, children's learning, productivity, and general quality of life – he called noise ‘the forgotten pollutant’. John almost single-handedly lobbied the Noise Abatement Act through Parliament, when in 1960, noise became a statutory nuisance for the first time in the UK. In this episode we enjoy the company of 2 guests who lobby for change that will create healthier homes and more sustainable construction and design practises. Daniel Slade joined the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) in January 2020 to work as a Policy and Projects Manager. The TCPA's vision is for homes, places and communities in which everyone can thrive. Their mission is to challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone. Cat Hoad is Director & Founder at Absolute Project Management who are a Founding Signatory of Interior Design Declares, for whom Cat is a Steering Committee member. Interior Design Declares is part of Construction Declares, a global petition movement uniting all strands of construction and the built environment. It is both a public declaration of our planet’s environmental crises and a commitment to take positive action in response to climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse. At the end of last year, as part of our ongoing mission to increase occupant wellbeing through noise reduction and improved acoustics, Quiet Mark announced a new partnership with NBS, a leading construction data and specification platform, to empower architects to specify ‘acoustics first’, by providing a shortcut for specifiers to source responsible products. Listen to Cat and Daniel, as they share, with our host Simon Gosling, more about their work and missions.

Om Podcasten

Welcome to The Quiet Mark Podcast. Simon Gosling, CMO at Quiet Mark - the independent, international approval award programme associated with the UK Noise Abatement Society - explores our relationship with sound in a series of conversations with experts who’ve spent their lives working with acoustics. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognises environmental noise as the 2nd largest environmental health risk in Western Europe behind air quality. The Mayor of London’s Environment Strategy warns that noise can contribute towards a range of physical and mental health problems, disturb sleep and affect people’s hearing, communication and learning. And, in our smart-phone era, noise isn’t only about the big sounds of planes, traffic and construction sites. Smaller sounds like someone FaceTiming on the bus or playing music loudly through their tinny headphones can cause stress, annoyance and impact on our mental health. Let’s talk quietly about sound.