The safety of our homes and neighbourhoods is a vital, if sometimes overlooked, determinant of health. Good urban planning and design can help to create safer places and communities
To ensure better and more inclusive health outcomes, the TCPA has identified 12 Healthy Homes Principles that all new housing developments must provide. Each month, this blog series explores a single principle in more detail.
Healthy Homes Principle: Safety from crime
England and Wales saw 442,000 domestic burglaries in 2024, a 13% increase on the previous year. Other domestic thefts rose by 18% in the same period. Domestic crimes such as burglaries can have lasting impact on people’s sense of safety and wellbeing (ONS, 2025). Growing evidence shows that safer places help people to live longer, healthier lives. Creating these environments means looking beyond policing towards planning, housing, neighbourhood design and promoting long-term stewardship.
This latest blog in our Healthy Homes series explores the impacts of unsafe homes on our health, and why this must be better addressed in how we provide housing and neighbourhoods.
How crime affects people’s health
Living in high crime areas correlates with worse mental and physical health outcomes. Indeed, the Health Foundation found that average life expectancy is significantly lower in neighbourhoods with higher crime rates. Men in the safest areas can live up to 5.8 years longer than those in the most dangerous; and for women it is 4.1 years more (The Health Foundation, 2024).
But the impact extends beyond direct experiences of crime: fear of crime leads to reduced physical activity, social withdrawal, and poorer mental health. People with high fear of crime are nearly twice as likely to experience depression. It also discourages use of parks, walking to public transport, or participating in community life which are all crucial for good health (Stafford, Chandola and Marmot, 2007; Hirschfield, 2004).
Importantly, crime incidents tend to cluster in the most deprived areas. Urban centres like Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and the West Midlands account for over 40% of domestic burglaries in England and Wales (ONS, 2017). Younger people, single-parent households, and ethnic communities are disproportionately affected. These inequalities reinforce each other, with those most at risk of crime often having the least resources to recover from it, further contributing to long-term health disparities (The Health Foundation, 2024). Understanding crime as a health issue requires tackling the broader causes of social inequality.
Credit: The Health Foundation, 2024
Designing and maintaining safety from crime
Secure, stable housing is foundational to both health and safety. The Safe Homes Movement links affordable, good quality housing to safer, more cohesive communities (Safe Homes Movement, 2024). When people aren’t forced into precarious, overcrowded or poor-quality homes, neighbourhoods are stronger and more resilient. Going further, urban planning and design can influence people’s sense of safety and risk of crime.
The Secured by Design (SBD) initiative, based on Oscar Newman’s ‘defensible space’ theory, aims to reduce crime through physical features like access control and territorial reinforcement (RICS, 2023). A ten-year review in West Yorkshire showed the potential benefits, finding that SBD-accredited streets had lower burglary rates, especially in early years of adoption (Armitage and Monchuk, 2010).
However, critics argue that some SBD measures can contradict good urban design principles. For example, limiting pedestrian access may discourage street activity, natural surveillance and community cohesion. Long-term success depends not just on physical interventions, but on the ongoing care for and stewardship of a place, and a sense of belonging, to ensure well-maintained, welcoming and inclusive spaces (TCPA, 2022, RICS, 2023). A study of ‘Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design’ echoed this, finding a failure to engage with local communities reduced opportunities for meaningful, lasting crime reduction (Piroozfar et al., 2019).
Safer communities
The role of Community Safety Partnerships is important – where responsible authorities (including local authorities) are required to work together to develop and implement strategies to protect their local communities from crime and to help people feel safe. This work includes a range of council services including lighting, street cleaning, planning and leisure.
Experiences of community-led schemes like Neighbourhood Watch – linked to Jane Jacob’s idea of ‘eyes on streets’ – also points to the value of resident action and ownership. Neighbourhood Watch schemes have shown some evidence of reducing crime rates – with those areas adopting the scheme associated with a 10% decrease in property crime (UCL, 2020). However, such schemes are dependent on locally engaged residents, and more typically those who live in more stable, less transient housing arrangements.
The question of gated communities and inclusive safety
The use of gated developments aligns with the ‘controlling access’ approach to safety from crime. Associated with exclusivity and security, gated communities have become increasingly controversial. Research by the University of Leeds found gated communities can actually heighten fear of crime, foster social division, and create blind spots for criminal activity. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has similarly warned that gated communities may attract crime by signalling affluence while simultaneously impeding access for emergency services or police (Financial Times, 2013).
In response, some developers have embraced a more integrated, ‘permeable’ approach to designing-in security – with a lighter-touch phasing of public, semi-private and private realms. Developments like NEO Bankside and King’s Cross in London used landscaping, lighting, and design cues to guide public access without erecting physical barriers; this has helped to create vibrant public spaces that feel open, yet are subtly secure. These approaches may offer a better balance between safety, inclusion and community vitality (Financial Times, 2013).
Policy gaps: the case of Permitted Development
National planning policy acknowledges the importance of safety, as does the National Design Guide – which provides guidance on designing out crime. Yet much of this guidance is advisory, not mandatory.
Homes produced through Permitted Development (PD) rights, that bypass full planning scrutiny, may lack essential security and design features like lighting, natural surveillance and well-planned layouts. Local policies that require good design, simply won’t apply unless explicitly included in prior approval conditions.
Furthermore, the application of design conditions through prior approval does not apply to all uses classes of buildings that are converted to residential use under PD. The risk is that these homes not only fall short on quality and safety, but they can actually exacerbate existing insecurities and health inequalities (TCPA, 2024).
Image: Beacon House, a PD office conversion in Neasden (Credit: Rob Clayton)
Good practice examples in Denmark
The Danish Town Planning Institute has been working directly on the issue of safety. To ensure citizens feel safe and secure in the built environment, it advocates planning tools that allow a targeted approach and tailored collaboration, based on eight principles:
| Security principle | Aim |
| 1. Opportunities for staying and activities | To create inclusive public spaces for diverse people across generations. |
| 2. Psychological ownership and responsibility | To establish clearly defined spaces with easily readable boundaries. |
| 3. Eyes on the street | To promote urban life, human presence, and natural/informal surveillance. |
| 4. Overview and visibility | To create good visibility and opportunities for overview. |
| 5. Cleaning and maintenance | To ensure proper upkeep of pavements, planting, street furniture, and facades. |
| 6. Lighting | To support traffic safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and to create a pleasant atmosphere. |
| 7. Physical protection | To design security measures carefully and integrate them discreetly into the urban space to avoid creating feelings of unsafety. |
| 8. Safe transport and movement | To create clearly defined routes for different types of traffic and thus ensure visibility and openness around paths for orientation and safety. |
These principles help to make Copenhagen, and other Danish cities and towns, safer environments for their inhabitants, and should be an inspiration for what could be done in a UK context (Danish Town Planning Institute, 2025).
Image: A pedestrianised street in Amagertov, Copenhagen (Credit: Mik Hartwell, via Wikipedia CC)
The benefits of social infrastructure
Recognising significant challenges faced by those living in more deprived areas, including on tackling crime, the latest report from the Independent Commission for Neighbourhoods (ICoN, 2025) has called for targeted investment in over 600 ‘mission critical’ neighbourhoods around the country. Such funds could support the ‘holistic regeneration’ of those areas, by developing and sustaining social infrastructure, providing the foundations for communities to thrive.
Creating safer homes and neighbourhoods is about so much more than locked doors or putting up gates and physical defences. It’s about designing and maintaining environments where people feel safe and connected. Thus, housing and wider planning policy needs to balance measures that support crime prevention with features that promote inclusivity and stewardship. This involves supporting vulnerable communities to feel that they are a valuable part of caring for and improving their neighbourhoods for the long term.
Building homes that ensure safety from crime is a central Healthy Homes Principle in the Campaign for Healthy Homes. To promote thriving healthy and inclusive communities, a fundamentally different approach to delivering new homes is required – one that puts the quality and affordability of new homes and communities as highly as the quantity that are delivered.
Clémence Dye and Rosalie Callway, TCPA
