Healthy New Towns: Lessons learned

In 2015, NHS England launched the Healthy New Towns programme. Their ambition was to explore how the design and development of new places and spaces would provide a real opportunity to create healthier and better connected communities.

The programme put discussions on design and the built environment at the centre of public health interventions. And this is critical – for improving health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities.

I’ve written previously about integrating health and housing, and it significance in health outcomes, but what about the wider community? What can we learn from Healthy New Towns?

This was the topic for a recent webinar facilitated by Clare Allcock from Kaleidoscope Health and Care. Speakers included

• Emily Hough, Director, Strategy Group, NHS England and Improvement
• Julia Thrift, Projects and Operations Director, Town and Country Planning Association
• Kate Hillerby, Healthy New Town Programme Manager, Whitehill & Bordon
• Kevin McGeough, Director of Ebbsfleet Garden City Healthy New Town Programme.

Lessons learned

The Healthy New Towns programme included 10 ‘demonstrator sites’ with developments ranging from 900 to 15,000 homes. The findings from the sites were published in ‘Putting Health into Place’.

Given the spread across England, the sites have included areas with differing and diverse health needs, different household incomes, and varying levels of health inequalities.

A key learning has been the importance of the need to engage a wide range of people – from Clinical Commissioning Groups, Local Authorities, planners, Housing Authorities, developers, to local community groups and local organisations. And this has not always be easy. Given the size and scale of some of the developments, they take time, up to 20 years. This is why a shared vision and clear governance structures is critical.

And developing Healthy New Towns has also been about understanding local health needs. This has been done via Joint Strategic Needs Assessments that bring together health and wellbeing strategies to address specific local needs.

These are big projects. The first generation of garden communities is being built in Ebbsfleet. It includes plans for 15,000 homes and 30,000 new jobs over the next 15 years. In this case, building on a brownfield site has meant both opportunities and challenges. It also included an international landscape challenge competition focused on finding designs that would encourage healthier behaviours and lifestyles.

And across the projects a lot of work has been done to understand local communities and how people can take control of their own health. This has meant addressing real local challenges around healthy eating and exercise and has included initiatives such as building in greenspace and edible and community gardens.

In Whitehill & Bordon in Hampshire, the site of the town is on an old garrison. The development has involved over 30 local partners. And in designing the town, the focus has been on addressing some of the key local health challenges. Initiatives have included the delivery of open spaces as well as behaviour change initiatives via a pop-up community garden, the establishment of Parkrun (a free weekly 5k) and junior Parkrun, and a skatepark delivered via a S106 contribution i.e. a contribution from developers to local communities. There’s also been a focus on getting families outdoors.

So how can we encourage people to take control of their health and wellbeing? How do planners address health inequalities? The panel noted the importance of not only Joint Strategic Needs Assessments but also doing the research and really finding out what local people are interested in. In addition, design review panels can work with existing communities to put health at the centre of planning.

And this work has not been without its challenges, from understanding how to work across a large number of partners by understanding their drivers, to having robust and long lasting governance structures.

What was clear from the discussion is that embedding good placemaking is key in building healthier and better connected communities.