Blog from Paul O'Brien

The pandemic has shone a light on what we already know: good quality housing, which is integrated with good quality design, through the prism of place-making, makes a huge contribution to the health and well-being of local communities. We are also all too aware that poor housing has a detrimental effect on health and health outcomes. This is why APSE is hugely supportive of the campaign for a Healthy Homes Act to ensure that its principles are enshrined in law.

APSE and the TCPA recently completed our sixth joint housing research collaboration, which identified many problems within the current system and made recommendations for improvement. In ‘At a crossroads, building foundations for healthy communities’ we called for:

1. central government to fully acknowledge local governments role in creating healthy places;
2. devolution of more decision-making power to improve co-ordination and communication across public health and planning;
3. the planning inspectorate to ensure that local plans address health and wellbeing;
4. more ambition on regulating quality in the built environment;
5. and for better joined up working across local authorities to promote health and wellbeing.