Recommendation 9

The former Public Health England’s Healthy Places team had a clear remit to support healthy development. Following PHE’s dissolution and the division of its responsibilities, there is a lack of clarity over which part of DHSC is now responsible for this role, and a lack of formal integration between DHSC and the organisations responsible for assessing planning applications. These is, however, encouraging evidence elsewhere of Departments enabling a greater focus on health in planning: for example, Active Travel England’s statutory role assessing applications for large housing developments. There are clear opportunities to go further in this vein: for example, by clarifying and formalising OHID’s role.