Build for Health – our first workshop
- Clare Delmar
- Jul 14
- 4 min read
On a beautiful summer evening last Tuesday, fifty-odd leaders and practitioners from the built environment, health provision, public health, planning and community development sectors met at Hawkins\Brown in London to workshop a growing challenge for our times – how do we ensure that the homes, places and neighbourhoods we develop do no harm at the very least and actively promote good health among residents, workers and visitors?
The origins of this collaborative initiative go back three years to 2022, when I published a blog inviting property developers to form a collective around healthy places, in which I argued
“as a sector with direct and long-term impact on the health & wellbeing of local communities, property developers and investors have an opportunity to leverage their impact and pioneer a collective approach to promoting public health and reducing health inequalities through the planning & development process. While developers cannot dictate how people should live their lives, they can shape the built environment and provide local services that remove barriers to healthier lifestyles and actively encourage and support public health.”
I challenged developers to come forward and lead and eventually one did – the CEO of Berkeley Group, Rob Perrins. We convened a roundtable in November 2022 at Berkeley Group in South Quay London, attended by leaders from property investment, housebuilding, social housing and health provision. I asked Professor Sir Michael Marmot, a leading epidemiologist based at UCL to speak about his research on variations in life expectancy across locations, challenging attendees to think how their approach to developing homes and places might impact this health inequality. We also suggested they consider collaborating to explore ways to improve health equity through the built environment.
It took a few months of followup, but the roundtable generated interest from Legal & General through its then head of social impact, Pete Gladwell, who generously funded a research project at the UCL Institute of Health Equity, led by Professor Marmot.
The project’s report - Building Health Equity: the Role of the Property Sector in Improving Health – was published at the end of last year. Through rigorous evidence review and comprehensive engagement with leaders in the property sector, it generated new evidence on links between housing, places and health, and offered key recommendations to the property sector.
In an attempt to kickstart the report’s call to action for industry leaders to collaboratively define healthy places and set standards for developing them, I engaged a group of practitioners in the built environment and health sectors to focus on why the industry needs to coordinate and how this might be done effectively. Given the government’s drive to build homes and new towns and to deliver a preventative health service in neighbourhoods, the need is growing.
Build for Health aims to seize and focus the momentum generated over the last three years and to create a force behind changing practice and embedding health into the planning, development and building of our neighbourhoods, places and homes.
Over the last several months our small group of practitioners have challenged each other with rigorous discussion about what Build for Health could be and what it could do. We recognise the depth and breadth of knowledge, insight and expertise currently contributing to the discourse around the built environment and public health: at its most basic Build for Health can connect these resources to provide a network of practitioners; this might evolve into a collaborative advocacy group, influencing how our homes and places are designed, developed and maintained to ensure good health.
We eventually distilled our discussions into three challenges, created straw men for them and threw these out to a wider group last Tuesday evening at our first workshop. We asked participants to consider these challenges, discuss and debate them in small groups, and to tell us and each other what they think Build for Health can be.
The Workshop was structured around the three challenges and their “straw men”:
Challenge 1: how to establish a movement of practitioners and
innovators who are committed to building places and environments that promote good health
Straw man:
-LinkedIn group “Build for Health”
-Share content - best practice, evidence and exemplars, innovations in practice
-Tours of places where health has been embedded in design, development and operation
Challenge 2: Agree a statement of purpose
Straw man:“
We as practitioners and leaders spanning the built environment, health,voluntary and community sectors acknowledge that the regeneration and development of places and environments play a fundamental role in promoting and sustaining good health. At a time when government plans to build more homes and invest in infrastructure coincides with its intent to shift the burden of health provision from hospital-based care to locally-led, preventive models of care, we are committed to working together and across sectors to ‘build for health’ “
Challenge 3: Shape foundational principles of practice for the Build for Health movement
Straw men:
i) All development impacts local health, and this must be acknowledged, measured and addressed. Informing this discussion is
· how to bring community voices into the health impact conversation
ii) Developers’ contributions intended to benefit communities must be reframed to focus on social determinants of health. Informing this discussion is a growing consensus that Section106 are not delivering the benefits for which they are intended
iii) community-led initiatives for health creation and participation are welcomed and valued. Informing this discussion are local initiatives delivered through health providers such as health coaching and social prescribing as well as broader initiatives such as the Health Creation Alliance and Greater Manchester Moving.
We will be following up on the discussions, new ideas and recommendations very soon. In the meantime, if you’re interested in being part of Build for Health, please get in touch.
Clare Delmar
Listen to Locals
14 July 2025
