Healthy New Towns
NHS England has launched the Healthy New Towns guidance leaflet titled Putting Health into Place, which introduces the 10 Healthy New Town Principles. These principles lie at the heart of creating healthy new places and showcase the learning and innovation from the Healthy New Towns Programme.
We are working with ten housing developments across England to shape the health of communities, and to rethink how health and care services can be delivered. The programme offers an excellent opportunity to unite public health, NHS providers and commissioners, planning and housing development to plan and build healthier places.
In the NHS Five Year Forward View, a clear commitment was made to dramatically improve population health, and integrate health and care services, as new places are built and take shape. This commitment recognised the need to build over 200,000 more homes in England every year, and invited Expressions of Interest from developments across the country.
The Department of Health has set a target of 26,000 homes to be built on NHS land, the Healthy New Towns programme, as an additional aim, is showing how this land can be used, not just to build homes but also to return benefit to local communities and the wider system.
Our demonstrator sites represent a cross-section of new housing developments in England. Over the last year, sites have finalised their delivery plans and have been setting up partnerships, involving planning and wider local authorities, housing developers, CCGs and health and care providers.
Their objectives are to develop best practice, case studies and guidance to help ensure all new housing developments embed certain principles, promoting health and wellbeing and securing high quality health and care services.
Nationally, we have developed strong links across government, planning and housing and will collate learning from the demonstrator sites to show how new housing developments can implement these principles.
Demonstrator sites
The ten Healthy New Towns demonstrator sites are:
- Whitehill and Bordon, Hampshire – 3,350 new homes on former Ministry of Defence land.
- Cranbrook, Devon – 8,000 new residential units.
- Darlington, County Durham – 2,500 residential units across three linked sites in the Eastern Growth Zone.
- Barking Riverside, London – 10,800 residential units on London’s largest brownfield site.
- Whyndyke Garden Village, Fylde, Lancashire – 1,400 residential units.
- Halton Lea, Runcorn – 800 residential units.
- Bicester, Oxfordshire – 6,000 homes in North West Bicester, 13,000 for Bicester in total.
- Northstowe, Cambridgeshire – 10,000 homes on former Ministry of Defence land.
- Ebbsfleet Garden City, Kent – up to 15,000 new homes in the first garden city for 100 years
- Barton, Oxford – 885 residential units.
Further information
If you want to be added to our mailing list, find out more about the programme, or share ideas for our sites, you can email us at england.healthynewtowns@nhs.net or join the discussion by following #HealthyNewTowns on Twitter for up to date information.