The places in which we live, work and socialise have a profound impact on our health. From access to green space and active travel, to the quality of housing and community infrastructure, the built environment plays a crucial role in shaping our wellbeing.
Yet, too often, health and wellbeing are treated as afterthoughts in planning, rather than a fundamental priority.
Paragraph 96 of the revised National Planning Policy Framework makes clear that planning policies and decisions should aim to achieve places that enable healthier lives and reduce health inequalities. But translating that ambition into practice can be challenging, particularly in the face of tight budgets, competing priorities, and the complexity of the planning system.
One practical tool available to councils are design codes. These set clear expectations for the design of new developments and can be used to ensure places are optimised to support people’s health and wellbeing. Developed in collaboration with employee-owned planning and urban design company Tibbalds, our new guidance, ‘Design Codes for Health and Wellbeing’, provides a framework for embedding health into the design-coding process.
By taking this approach, councils can use planning to address local health and wellbeing challenges – whether that’s tackling air pollution, improving access to nature, or ensuring that housing and public spaces encourage social connection.
Design codes offer clarity for developers and can help create places that actively support zbetter health outcomes, while also delivering high-quality, sustainable growth.
Councils have a crucial role in ensuring that health is central to planning and development. By integrating health and wellbeing into design codes, we can create communities where people not only live, but thrive.
- ‘Design Codes for Health and Wellbeing’ can be downloaded for free.