Planning matters

Whether you’re an enthusiast or a critic of the planning system, there is no denying its pivotal role in shaping our environment on a local up to global level. It’s an open secret that every new development – regardless of scale – sustains some impact on popular news topics such as the economy, public health, and climate change. It is also clear that these issues are intrinsically inter-related.

As such, it is important that we fully understand such impacts in order to maximise the benefits they can bring to the population, whilst simultaneously focusing on minimising any potential harm. This is the purpose of Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) – an assessment that has rapidly grown in demand over the last decade, particularly since the pandemic, due to a rising concern regarding local and national health inequality.

Broadly speaking, HIAs measure the impact of a new development against a number of key health determinants, disaggregated into a number of health indicators (see Figure 1). These indicators vary considerably, from income and air quality, to sense of belonging and housing conditions.

Health is a complex, intricate topic and therefore presents a number of challenges when it comes to assessing the impacts of a new development against the indicators outlined in guidance. Healthier – our new HIA framework – takes account of these challenges and applies a large array of varied data to articulate what the definitive impacts of new developments are. A couple of prevalent challenges are summarised below.

First, health is influenced by many exogenous and endogenous factors. Exogenous factors relate to the external factors that could impact an individual’s health, such as air quality; the availability of employment opportunities; and the quality of housing. For the most part, they are factors that are outside of an individual’s control. In contrast, endogenous factors are those that an individual has far greater control over, and are often characterised as behavioural decisions. Consequently, new developments, (theoretically) have a much lower impact on influencing endogenous factors as, ultimately, they rely on human decisions.

By way of example, Lichfields recently assessed the health impact of a mixed-use residential scheme – comprising of new housing and a foodstore in the North East.

In this case study, the provision of new housing was assessed to naturally have a beneficial impact on the quality of local housing as it is likely to unlock a host of associated positive health-related impacts (see associated blog). It was also important to assess the impact of the foodstore on key health indicators such as nutrition and diet. However, the true scale of this impact was less clear. Whilst the new foodstore will increase the accessibility of healthy and affordable food, the extent of the impact is ultimately reliant on the decision-making of the local population to choose such items. As such, to maximise the benefit that this aspect of the development will have on the local population, it could require a number of ‘supporting’ interventions that goes past the responsibility of the developer (such as improved food education).

A common oversight on some HIAs is to only consider the short-term implications of new developments on health. Typically, this provides an unweighted bias towards adverse impacts, as these impacts often have a stronger appearance in the short term. Alternatively, many beneficial impacts instead have a lag period where the true extent of the impact is not clear until years later.

One such scenario was presented when Lichfields assessed the health impact of a new school in Yorkshire. The proposed development was anticipated to generate adverse impacts during construction with respect to noise, by virtue of its proximity to nearby houses. Such impact could generate poorer mental wellbeing in the short term – due to disturbance – but, resort back to normal post-construction phase. In contrast, the impact of an enhanced education offer may only become clear in the long term. Indeed, a good quality education enhances crucial cognitive and social skills, which in the long run supports the potential for better paid employment opportunities – an indirect, but strong determinant for positive health outcomes – as well as well-reasoned decision-making.

At its core, Healthier is designed to help ensure that all new developments will have a net benefit on the health of the local population. As a result, it supports the planning application in meeting validation requirements, as well as certifies that the scheme is beneficial.

Our framework combines the multitude of guidance methodologies for assessing health across the UK into one comprehensive, but flexible format to streamline the process for clients. Underpinned by a host of publicly available datasets, Healthier models key health determinants and weights them appropriately to reflect their true impact on health outcomes. This comprehensive approach ensures each assessment is robust to meet the rigours of planning and public scrutiny. Reports are then tailored to meet the specific requirements of local planning authorities and can be applied across any sector and for any scale of development.

Please contact Isaac Vango or Helen Ashby-Ridgway if you require any help with health-based assessments or would like a further discussion on what we can offer to you.