1. Health Impact Assessments (HIAs):
Encourage HIAs for all major development projects to evaluate their potential health impacts and ensure that health considerations are integrated into planning decisions. From April 2027, HIAs will be required under the Health Impact Assessment (Wales) Regulations 2025 by public bodies when making decisions of a strategic nature.
2. Enable active everyday lifestyles:
Prioritise the development of infrastructure that enables walking and cycling to be practical and safe, and public transportation the easy choice, reducing car dependency. Access to green space and play opportunities must be made easier and more equitable to a range of population groups, removing barriers to everyday physical activity opportunities.
3. Inclusive design:
Implement policy that ensures inclusive design is incorporated into new development, ensuring that everyone can benefit from the natural and built environment. This includes accessible and safe active travel, public transport, dementia and sensory-impaired friendly environments, safe pedestrian crossings, age-friendly accommodation and public spaces (eg inclusion of resting points and public toilets). Consult with local health boards and public health teams at pre-application phase of development so that healthcare service and population health needs can be factored into the design process.
4. Sustainable locations for new development:
Implement policy to ensure new development prioritises development on brownfield sites and locations near to existing neighbourhoods and public transport networks, allowing for walkable neighbourhoods to be created and enhanced. Prioritise the principles of placemaking for all new development and restrict development in areas vulnerable to climate change implications, such as flood risks.
5. Natural spaces and recreation:
Increase the provision of parks, community gardens, play and recreational facilities, and enable access to nature, particularly in areas where there are known to be inequalities in access. Ensure green space is designed with a life-course approach, to meet the needs of the population.
6. Child-friendly environments:
Implement the Ministerial Review of Play recommendations in relation to play:
- Ensure the right to play is sufficiently incorporated into strategic policy instruments and decisions;
- Ensure the principle of play as a matter of spatial justice is recognised and understood throughout Planning Policy Wales;
- Ensure the views and experiences of children inform the ways in which neighbourhoods are planned and managed.
This aligns with the principles of the Well-being of Future Generations Act.
7. Age-friendly environments:
We need to plan neighbourhoods that enable our ageing population to continue to live independently in their own homes for as long as possible. This means places and spaces that enable older people to take physical activity, access services and meet other people:
- Ensure housing is provided to meet needs of older people, both in terms of older people-specific accommodation, but in creating ‘lifetime homes’, and that it protects their health through being able to withstand extremes of temperature due to climate change
- Ensure housing for older people is located in places they can walk, cycle or use public transport to get to services and activities
- Design green spaces and community areas to meet the needs of older people, for example through provision of benches and toilets
- Provide community facilities to provide the opportunity to meet others, reducing the risk of loneliness
- Ensure dementia-friendly spaces are included in new development
8. Healthy food environments:
Implement policies to encourage the establishment of healthy food outlets and food growing opportunities. Implement clear policy guidance in national planning policy to limit the density of hot food takeaway and fast-food outlets. For example, as in the National Planning Policy Framework for England:
Local planning authorities should refuse applications for hot food takeaways and fast-food outlets:
a) within walking distance of schools and other places where children and young people congregate, unless the location is within a designated town centre; or
b) in locations where there is evidence that a concentration of such uses is having an adverse impact on local health, pollution or anti-social-behaviour.
9. Community engagement:
Ensure meaningful engagement with communities in the planning process to ensure developments meet their health needs and preferences. This can be achieved through strengthening the requirement for public consultations and collaborative planning activities such as design review workshops or panels.
Engagement with the community at pre-application stage of planning applications would result in more collaborative design and meeting of population needs.
