Empowering Healthy Places: Unveiling the powers and practices of local councils in fostering healthy neighbourhoods

This guide from the Local Government Association (LGA) presents an overview of local government powers in relation to planning and public health, offering a holistic approach for thinking about how to create healthy neighbourhoods and a summary of the relevant powers and practices available to councils.

It also draws on four case studies, exploring the different ways that councils are working to create healthy neighbourhoods and builds on work such as the LGA and TCPA’s Developing Healthier Places report from 2018, which sets out how councils can work with developers to deliver healthy places. 

Intended as a guide to empower councils to make use of the powers already available to them to shape healthy neighbourhoods and reduce health inequalities, this includes improving the conditions of existing neighbourhoods as well as developing new places. It also sets out recommendations for national government and for additional powers and practices councils might need to further enable them to lead in shaping healthy places.