Let’s not wait for planning reform to deliver healthy places

Originally published by The Planner, 7 February 2023

Planning reform that supports healthy places is unlikely to happen soon, says Matthew Morgan. So planners must take the lead.

There is no legal duty for new developments to deliver healthy, sustainable places. So the focus has not been on build quality or energy efficiency, nor on ensuring that developments enable a healthy, sustainable lifestyle for those who move in. Instead, the development of new homes has been seen by successive governments as a tool for unlocking growth.

This is despite the fact that we’re living through a climate emergency and in a country where those living in the most deprived areas will die up to 18 years earlier than those living in affluent areas.

It’s clear that planning reform is desperately needed – as is increased funding in this essential function. But it’s also clear from the recently published consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework that the kind of planning reform that is needed is unlikely to come anytime soon. So, planners – and indeed all those working in the built environment sector – need to be looking at what they can do locally to improve the status quo.

Clearly, change is needed at the national policy level; a commitment is needed to ensure that planning delivers good health outcomes. But there are things that planning authorities, urban designers and developers can be doing right now (some already are).

Updating supplementary planning documents and developing local plans that put health and wellbeing front and centre are just some of the steps that can be taken now. Strengthening sustainability appraisals for sites provides another opportunity. Braintree District Council uses theirs to assess the maximum distances new homes will be built from services such as GP surgeries, acknowledging “improving the health of the district’s residents and mitigating/reducing potential health inequalities” as a sustainability objective.

And Nottingham City Council’s Design Quality Framework is focused on the three pillars of sustainability and on ‘place psychology’ – another example of proactive action to enable good local planning decisions.

We can’t wait for national policy and laws to come into place through this government or any other. We must make good decisions now for the health and wellbeing of our future populations.

Matthew Morgan is director of the Quality of Life Foundation