Campaign for Healthy Homes

The Healthy Homes campaign aims to transform the way that the built environment is regulated to ensure that all new homes promote the health and wellbeing of their residents.  

The Healthy Homes campaign is managed by the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), in partnership with Lord Nigel Crisp, cross-bench peer and ex-Chief Executive of the NHS. The campaign is supported by the Nationwide Foundation.

The TCPA and Lord Crisp have developed the Healthy Homes Private Members Bill, which is currently moving through parliament (see below). We are also proposing it could be applied as an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

If made law, the bill would introduce legally binding Healthy Homes Principles. These define what we mean by a ‘Healthy Home’ and lay out the basic standards we should expect of all new homes. They are scientifically robust, common-sense and universally important. They go far further than current policy and guidance (see below). 

The TCPA is also working with local councils and communities to offer tailored support on how they can secure greater control over the quality of development in their area. 

Building regulations do not cover many of the key aspects of a healthy home. They tend to emphasize safety but not health promotion. This is particularly the case for aspects that do not concern the fabric of buildings, such as connectivity and access to green space. Planning policy and guidance, meanwhile, is often too weak, or too easily misapplied. 

More generally, the government’s approach to securing decent homes and communities is fragmented and spread across building regulations, planning, the health and safety regime, and a variety of legislation. These ‘requirements’ are highly variable. The recent review of the Decent Homes standard could potentially address some of the worst issues in the Private Rental Sector and poor quality homes. However, it would not provide a comprehensive set of health requirements, including regarding climate resilience (e.g. from overheating and flood risk), access to amenities and transport, limiting indoor and ambient air pollution, safety from crime and fire.

In contrast, the Healthy Homes Principles cover all relevant aspects of homes. The Healthy Homes Bill embeds them in primary legislation and requires that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Homes and Communities ensures that all relevant policy and guidance for which they are responsible contributes to the delivery of the Principles. By applying to the Secretary of State, not to policy, the Principles cut across and join up regimes for regulating the quality of the built environment which are currently disjointed.

The Healthy Homes Bill also includes a duty on local planning authorities to plan for affordable housing needs, to secure the long term health, safety and wellbeing of residents. This recognises the adequate provision of genuinely affordable housing is vital to help people to thrive in their communities.

While cross-departmental coordination in Westminster has been poor for decades it is, quite simply, impossible to build genuinely Healthy Homes without it. Housing policy, environmental policy, health policy, transport policy, and economic policy must all be coordinated, and deployed via effective planning. A lack of coordination is one of the reasons why many new homes are of such poor quality. 

That is why the Healthy Homes Bill is deliberately designed to facilitate and require engagement between government departments.

Three All Party Parliamentarian Groups (APPGs) have endorsed the Healthy Homes Principles – the APPG on Healthy Homes and Buildings, the APPG on Ending Homelessness and the APPG for the Housing Market and Housing Delivery.

During the second reading of the Bill in the Lords in 2023, representatives from all the political parties declared their support, including: Lord Blunkett (Labour), Lord Young of Cookham (Conservative), Baroness Bennett (Green), Lord Stunell (Liberal Democrat), Baroness Prashar (Crossbench) and Lord Best (Crossbench). 

You can follow the campaign’s progression via our quickfire updates (sign up here). Built environment professionals can lead by examples by signing up to the Healthy Homes Pledge.

It is also important to engage in conversations that underline the connection between health and housing, whether it be with politicians, community groups, or even friends and family.  

If you are part of a community group or other organisation that you think could be interested in adopting or supporting the Principles, please see below.

Any organisation can support the campaign by endorsing the Healthy Homes Principles and calling for them to be introduced. And, depending on what type of work your organisation does, you may be able to actively implement them, including by signing up to the Healthy Homes Pledge.

If you’re a developer, you should ensure that you deliver homes that comply with the Healthy Homes Principles. If you work in or lead a local authority, you could ensure that your policy aligns with them. 

If you’re interested in supporting the campaign, get in touch with Clemence (dot) Dye (at) tcpa.org.uk

The TCPA are working with councils and communities to explore different ways the Healthy Homes Principles can be used as a framework for improving the quality of new developments in their area.  

As part of this, the TCPA are delivering free online and in-person workshops to officers and members who want to adopt the Principles, deliver the Principles, or generally explore how they plan for healthier homes and places. 

If you are interested, please contact: HeathyHomesAct@tcpa.org.uk.

The TCPA are working with several local authorities, town councils, and combined authorities to adopt the Principles in policy, and are providing training to deliver the Principles on the ground. 

Several local authorities and place-based groups are endorsing the Principles. These include: Arun District Council, Herefordshire Council, Hertfordshire Local Enterprises Partnership, Lewes District Council, London Borough of Hounslow, Norwich City Council, and Scarborough Borough Council.  

Developers, housing associations, local authorities and consultants have already focused on investing in the quality of the homes that they are building. For example, HabInteg, the Federation of Masterbuilders, RIBA, Shal Housing, Skyroom, Velux, and Wates have already signed up to the Healthy Homes Pledge. 

By committing to deliver Healthy Homes organisations reassure customers and residents that their long-term health is prioritised by their housing developers. The Healthy Homes Principles will also help to level the playing field to ensure that quality standards are met. 

We believe that everyone, regardless of their income, should have a right to a home that supports their health and wellbeing. In addition, there are strong economic arguments for Heathy Homes. 

People can be more productive if they have the springboard of a Healthy Home. As we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic, high quality housing can improve people’s resilience to external shocks.  

• Building quality homes to begin with saves the costs that arise from retrofitting. To meet acceptable standards, we already need to retrofit many of our homes to meet climate and energy efficiency regulations. We can either do it now or more expensively later. Indeed, the government’s decision to scrap the Zero Carbon Homes policy, that was set to be implemented in 2016, cost the occupants of new homes built up to 2019 more than £200 per year on missed energy savings according to a report by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit; 
• Poor quality housing is costing the NHS £1.4bn a year, while the wider societal costs of leaving people in poor-quality housing are approximately £18.5bn a year (BRE, 2021); 
• Economic inactivity in the UK has increased by around 700,000 people since before the pandemic. The main reason for economic inactivity for 50-69 year olds in the second quarter of 2022 was ill health (Health Foundation, 2022), something which our living environments and homes have a powerful role in determining; 
• Meeting the objectives of the Healthy Homes campaign also coincides with meeting many of the government’s targets in areas such as: 
  • Addressing health inequalities as a part of the ‘Levelling Up’ Agenda 
  • Climate Change 
  • Investment in infrastructure 
  • Improving public transport. 

This campaign focusses only on new housing because it seeks to fix a challenge before it arises. And even in focusing only on new homes, the Bill has the potential to affect thousands of people’s health outcomes on a yearly basis. Indeed, the government has a target for 300,000 homes to be built each year in England. 

This campaign is also an ‘entry point’ to fixing housing challenges and the planning system more widely, and to promote the retrofit of existing housing. This is both in terms of local priorities and experience, and legal concepts and principles. 

While wealthier people do have more choices in the market, it is impossible for everyone to achieve the level of affluence that is required to afford these options. Not everyone can be wealthy, and many thousands of people have no say over the homes in which they live.  

If the government introduces the Healthy Homes Principles into regulations, policy, and law, and universally applies them to all new homes, they will not only hold housebuilders more accountable for the quality of the housing they produce, but also create a level playing field for the whole industry. This would create stability over the long-term, which allow the market to adapt and innovate. 

Any increases in build costs that arise will be reflected in the price developers will pay for land.