Select committee: Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 9
First Report - Prevention in health and social care: healthy places
Published 19 Jan 2024
Paragraph 38
Addressed to Department of Health and Social Care
Health and Social Care Committee Prevention in health and social care All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
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.
From: Health and Social Care Committee, First Report - Prevention in health and social care: healthy places (HC 484), paragraph 38, 19 January 2024
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 9 May 2024 (deadline 19 March 2024).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it accepts some of the Committee's recommendations on healthy places but declines others, and states that it has carefully considered all of them.
- On the Decent Homes Standard, it accepts the recommendation, saying the Renters (Reform) Bill will bring the private rented sector under a standard for the first time and that it "intend[s] to publish our consultation on an updated DHS soon".
- On Awaab's Law, it accepts the recommendation. It will publish a consultation response and bring forward secondary legislation for social housing "as soon as practicable", but says the private rented sector needs "a different approach".
- It declines to consult on design and space standards, stating: "we do not believe it is necessary to consult on our design or space standards at this time."
- It declines to make OHID a statutory consultee, saying new statutory consultees would need to be "clearly justified", and that it is "not currently looking to extend the list of statutory consultees".