Health impact assessments

A health impact assessment (HIA) is a tool used to identify the health impacts of a plan or project and to develop recommendations to maximise the positive impacts and minimise the negative impacts while maintaining a focus on addressing health inequalities. By bringing such health considerations to the fore, HIAs add value to the planning process.

The Oxfordshire Health Impact Assessment Toolkit was approved by the Oxfordshire Growth Board on 26 January 2021 for use by all six Oxfordshire local authorities.

The purpose of the toolkit is to deliver sustainable growth across the county. It provides a suite of tools for use by all those involved in the development process, including developers, land agents, planners and policymakers, as a mechanism for putting healthy place shaping principles into practice and delivering improvements to health and well-being, whether as part of regeneration and development schemes in existing communities or in new settlements.

More resources

• Building for a Healthy Life: A Design Code for neighbourhoods, streets, homes and public spaces (2020) is Homes England’s key measure of design quality.
• The National Design Guide sets out the characteristics of well-designed places and demonstrates what good design means in practice.
• The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) highlights that the planning system can play an important role in facilitating social interaction and creating healthy, inclusive communities by setting out the wide-ranging ways in which planning should promote healthy, inclusive and safe communities (Chapter 8).
• National Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) notes that local planning authorities should ensure that health and wellbeing are considered in local and neighbourhood plans and in planning decision making. Planning should aim to promote healthy communities which are places that are good to grow up and grow old in through support of healthy behaviours and reductions in health inequalities.
• Public Health Guidance: The healthy place shaping approach that we have developed and are delivering in Oxfordshire is now recognised in national guidance: 
  https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/putting-health-into-place-executive-summary/
  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-inequalities-place-based-approaches-to-reduce-inequalities