The Code to Good Community Health

New guidance for design process puts the importance of health and wellbeing at the top of the agenda for planning…

Apex Planning Consultant’s Paul Smith recently attended a seminar on health, wellbeing and planning organised by the RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) South East region. It took place on 7 May 2025 at the Milton Keynes City Council offices, Saxon Court.

Well timed, as new guidance – Design Codes for Health and Wellbeing – launched in March 2025 aims to show the potential for improving the health of the population, if health and wellbeing are taken into consideration within the design code.

There are numerous statistics that show how many areas of the UK feature general poor health and wellbeing of their citizens. This in turn can result in added costs to the NHS, the people themselves, as well as local and central government and the broader economy.

Urban areas are most at risk of a population that lacks general health – thanks to pollution, and a deficit of safe walking and cycling routes, parks and open spaces. All of these make it hard for the local population to access exercise freely and easily. Globally, insufficient physical activity is one of the leading factors for death worldwide, yet in the UK, only 34% of adults walk or cycle five times per week.

New Design Code

The new guidance mentioned above comes from the Quality of Life Foundation in partnership with consultancy Tibbalds, the Town and Country Planning Association, academic network Tackling Root Causes Upstream of Unhealthy Urban Development (TRUUD) and Henley Business School, and is also supported by local authority body, Urban Design Learning (UDL).

The report highlights how communities need “involvement at each of the three stages of the design code process: analysis; visioning; and coding. The engagement must be meaningful, measurable, and it should be clear how feedback has informed the process and output”.

These design codes can be key in embedding health and wellbeing into plans. Katja Stille, director of Tibbalds, said: “If we’re not thinking about health at that point, we’ve often lost the opportunity to make the most of the site.”

Matthew Morgan, director of the Quality of Life Foundation, agreed: “Design codes are a mechanism for delivering places and you have to think about the health of people and the planet in those conversations, so why wouldn’t you talk about people’s health and wellbeing?”

Working Together

The development of the code also shows it’s important to include public health officers in the discussions, with the code offering a common ground for them and planning professionals to work together.

Having the design code at the start of the project allows health and wellbeing to be an integral part of the design from the start, and for public health to have key input from the outset.

The report adds that: “Local planning authorities and health teams will have access to data-based insights into place specific economic, social, and environmental determinants of spatial health disparity. This is critical because these vary across regions and the UK and are not static. Local design codes should be informed by evidence of conditions locally, rather than taking a generic approach.”

The government’s changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) have also seen a move away from district-wide design coding, instead emphasising local design codes, informed by the National Model Design Code.

Morgan has also spoken with the government’s New Towns Taskforce with a view to applying coding in planned new settlements, and the foundation’s new guide is part of a wider movement to bring planners and public health professionals closer together when it comes to planning.

To make this happen, the report says that “local planning authorities must be able access the right expertise, including public health skills, knowledge, and urban design skills. Urban design training in local authority public health teams should be undertaken. These skills might include understanding the context and local needs, and being able to identify appropriate solutions to problems, all of which are compatible with competencies set out in the Public Health Skills and Knowledge Framework”.

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