The head of NHS England has announced plans to deliver ten “healthy new towns” across the country.
In a speech to the Kings Fund in London, Simon Stevens, CEO of NHS England, named the sites set to generate more than 76,000 new homes, built to “design in” health and wellbeing.
The NHS said it would help shape the sites “so as to test creative solutions for the health and care challenges of the 21st century, including obesity, dementia and community cohesion”.
NHS England’s Healthy New Town programme, supported by Public Health England, (PHE) will bring together well-known clinicians, designers and technology experts to create modern health and care services within the built environment, NHS England said.
Features to be tested at some of the sites include fast food-free zones near schools, safe and attractive green spaces and access to new GP services using digital technology. The schemes will be designed to reflect the needs of local communities, NHS said.
Stevens said: “The much-needed push to kick start affordable housing across England creates a golden opportunity for the NHS to help promote health and keep people independent. As these new neighbourhoods and towns are built, we'll kick ourselves if in ten years’ time we look back having missed the opportunity to 'design out' the obesogenic environment, and 'design in' health and wellbeing."
Expressions of interest in the programme were invited last summer. The ten chosen sites are: Whitehill and Bordon, Hampshire; Cranbrook, Devon; Darlington; Barking Riverside, London; Whyndyke Farm in Fylde, Lancashire; Halton Lea, Runcorn; Bicester, Oxon; Northstowe, Cambridgeshire; Ebbsfleet Garden City, Kent; and Barton Park, Oxford.
