As part of its work through the award winning Enhancing the Healing Environment Programme to improve Environments for Care at End of Life The King's Fund has supported over 35 hospices as they have undertaken projects to improve their environment of care.
In 2007, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, President of both The King's Fund and The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, challenged both organisations to use their combined expertise to develop a set of principles that could be used to inform future hospice design and also be used more widely for all environments in which care is delivered to people at the end of their lives. Working with patients, staff and volunteers from a number of hospices, workshops were held to develop a set of design principles for hospices. These principles then formed the basis of an architectural design competition which has led to the development of an Environmental Design Audit Tool for residential and day care homes and hospices.