Planning for Public Health – Building the Local Evidence Base Consider How Best to Gain Local Evidence of the Impact of Spatial Planning Decisions on Health and Wellbeing

The TCPA’s Reuniting Health with Planning project has generated both detailed guidance for planners and public health specialists2 and an analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing the two professions at a time when the opportunity for closer working is greater, at least in unitary authorities, but budgets are under pressure.3 A recurrent theme in the TCPA’s work has been the challenge of finding, generating and using appropriate evidence to make the case for spatial planning interventions that seek to improve health and wellbeing. The 2012 guidance, Reuniting Health with Planning,2 recommended that planners and public health specialists develop a In recent years a good deal of work has been undertaken to reconnect the planning and public health professions. The return of the public health workforce to local government in England and the higher profile given to health and wellbeing in the National Planning Policy Framework have both brought new momentum to this work. In March 2014, the Government published its National Planning Practice Guidance, which reiterated that ‘Local planning authorities should ensure that health and wellbeing, and health infrastructure are considered in local and neighbourhood plans and in planning decision making’.1 planning for public health – building the local evidence base