NHS England publishes healthy towns guidance

The NHS has published guidance on how councils, developers, the health service and other stakeholders can collaborate to deliver housing schemes and places which promote wellbeing among residents.

The Healthy New Towns programme was launched in 2015 to assess how healthier and better-connected communities with integrated and high-quality health services could be developed through a collaborative approach.

Recommendations included getting public health teams to be active participants in the planning housing and development systems from the outset.

Developers should prioritise health, wellbeing and working with communities on new places, which would make it easier to navigate the planning process “and strengthen their commercial reputation” at the same time.

And the voluntary sector, which the NHS said had a history of working to deliver health and wellbeing, should view the creation of a new place “as an opportunity and engage with the process very early on in order to effectively influence decision-making”.

The programme picked with 10 demonstrator sites three years ago (see box) ranging from 900 to 15,000 homes at different stages of development.

These included Barton in Oxford, a near-900 homes scheme built by Grosvenor (pictured), and Ebbsfleet Garden City in Kent, where up to 15,000 homes are being built on brownfield land between now and 2026.

The NHS said the demonstrator sites were being supported to drive healthy place-making practices, with a view to planning and designing a healthier built environment, enabling strong and connected communities, and creating new ways of providing integrated health and care services.

The process illustrated the roles of stakeholders including councils, developers, housing associations and the health service could play in building healthier places.

Andy Sharpe, director of project management for strategic land, Grosvenor Britain & Ireland, which is working on the Barton Healthy New Town scheme, said the development community had to take more responsibility and work with public sector partners to understand the needs of local people and shape places to support healthier lifestyles.

“That could mean providing homes with easy access to green space for exercise, delivering the sports and leisure facilities needed to underpin non-clinical treatments or creating places that encourage community cohesion to support better mental health.

“The UK’s major healthcare challenges are putting a strain on NHS and local government budgets, but better places to live and work could really ease this.”

Sharpe said Grosvenor was working with Oxford City Council and frontline health and care providers to get their take on what was required in the area. “It’s allowing us to build health and wellbeing into the site’s design, with improvements to the allotments, new outdoor gym equipment and a sports pavilion, as well as using the development as a catalyst to address long-term health challenges for residents by working with GPs in Barton.”