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Peoples’ health over their lifetime is influenced by where they’re born, grow up, live, work, and become old. These social factors are important ‘causes of the causes’ of ill health. How places are designed and built is therefore crucial to creating a healthier, fairer and more sustainable society
People’s opportunities for good health are influenced by many factors outside of the health and social care system. They lie in the circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age: known as the wider determinants of health. This includes the natural and built environment which impact on physical activity levels, social isolation and diet, and can contribute to many of the most common health problems, including type-2 diabetes, depression and obesity.
The way places are designed has a significant influence over whether communities can live healthy lives. Safe, accessible environments conducive to walking and cycling are more likely to encourage physical activity and reduce levels of air pollution. Social spaces designed into streets and buildings allow individuals to meet and interact with their community. Fresh food outlets and access to food growing spaces encourage healthy eating. Parks and open spaces give children the places required to run, play sports, and interact with each other. Targeted regeneration of can improve the prosperity and living conditions of those in areas of deprivation and support reductions in health inequalities.
It is therefore essential that local authorities and delivery partners explicitly consider the health impact of planning and design decisions, and employ available policy and practical approaches to promote the design and building of healthy developments. Where opportunities exist to address health challenges in adjacent communities, they should be considered and built into wider investment and improvement plans.
Your plans, policies, negotiations and decisions need to show evidence that you’ve taken steps to consider how the design of developments aims to achieve healthy, inclusive safe places which, enable and support healthy lifestyles, especially where this would address local health and wellbeing needs – for example through provision of safe and accessible green infrastructure, sports facilities, local shops, access to healthier food, allotments and layouts that encourage walking and cycling in line with the National Planning Policy Framework, paragraph 91c. We want to see that you do the following:
1. Identify Local Health and Wellbeing Needs
Considered and referenced local Public Health data and intelligence to understand the impact of any new development on the health needs of existing and future populations to ensure the design enables and supports healthy lifestyles or mitigates against any negative health impacts
Developing predictions of the demographic and emerging needs of future populations of those moving into new developments is important and can be built upon by learning from similar sites and their own health needs. In order to reduce health inequalities it is also important to understand the impact of new development on surrounding existing communities and therefore how the development can bring benefits for the least well-off.
Local data and intelligence can be viewed via:
2. Use evidence informed principles to design healthy places
Use the latest evidence and guidance to inform the design of the built and natural environment to improve health outcomes for example;
More guidance can be found in the ‘Further Guidance section’.
3. Consider impact on health inequalities
Health inequalities are unfair and avoidable differences in health across the population, and between different groups within society. They arise because of the conditions in which we are born, grow, live work and age.
To reduce health inequalities in a community, efforts must be made to ensure that new developments bring benefits for the least healthy or well-off, wherever possible. This includes addressing health challenges in adjacent communities which should be considered and built into wider investment and improvement plans.
In 2015, NHS England launched its Healthy New Towns programme. This looked at how new places could be made healthier and more connected, with high-quality health services designed in from the start. The research was carried out at 10 ‘demonstrator sites’ across the country, ranging from 900 to 15,000 homes: its findings have been incorporated into the National Planning Policy Framework and National Planning Practice Guidance. It also drew up 10 Principles of Putting Health into Place, set out below, that we’ve adopted as part of our planning process in Kent and Medway. How they’re developed underlines the need for developers and designers to work with healthcare, public health and other professionals in a multidisciplinary, collaborative way.
