Agenda item

Healthy place-shaping in the wider growth agenda

To consider the attached report from the Chief Executive Officers of Cherwell District Council/Oxfordshire County Council, South Oxfordshire District Council/Vale of the White Horse District Council, Oxford City Council, West Oxfordshire District Council, Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, and The Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership. 

Minutes:

Further to the discussion at the last meeting, the Growth Board discussed a paper on embedding health into the growth agenda.  Jonathan McWilliam, the Director of Public Health at Oxfordshire County Council, also gave a presentation on the benefits of healthy place-shaping. 

 

The Growth Board welcomed the opportunity to bring together planning health and wellbeing with planning for housing and economic growth, and planning for improved infrastructure.  The benefits of healthy place-shaping had already been experienced through successful schemes at Barton and Bicester, which had improved people’s lives.  Healthy place-shaping could be embedded through the sub-groups working on housing, infrastructure and the Joint Statutory Spatial Plan, and there should be a common agenda developed for the Growth Board, the Health and Wellbeing Board, and the Community Safety Partnerships. 

 

The Growth Board suggested that the experiences gained from Barton and Bicester should be used to develop healthy place-shaping.  Such a strategy should aim, for example, to reduce health inequalities, build communities and reduce loneliness, improve air quality, reduce reliance on private transport and move towards cleaner vehicles, and help people to live in their own homes for longer.  The councils and agencies must work together and avoid duplication.  The Growth Board considered that officers could use the Growth Deal’s capacity funding to assist with this agenda through the preparation of the Joint Statutory Spatial Plan, if funds were available. 

 

The preparation of a healthy place-shaping strategy was supported by Diane Hedges representing the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group and by Lesley Tims representing the Environment Agency. 

 

RESOLVED to:

 

(a)      request the production of a strategy for how healthy place-shaping can ensure that development supports the creation of healthy communities.  This will inform the work of the Housing and Growth Deal and Growth Board workstreams;

 

(b)      embed officers with a remit for healthy place-shaping into the Growth Board sub-structures, including the Growth Deal Programme Board and the workstreams for the Joint Statutory Spatial Plan, infrastructure, housing, and productivity working with the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership;

 

(c)       embed healthy place-shaping into the development of the Joint Statutory Spatial Plan, the Local Industrial Strategy and the Environment Strategy.  This will ensure influence over the strategic design and siting of local communities and local industry and will also embrace environmental concerns.  This will also enable the principles of healthy place-shaping to be incorporated into the Local Plans of the future in Oxford City and the districts; 

 

(d)      create a network of officers from across respective organisations whose role (in addition to their other duties) will be to understand and keep up to date with the developments in the approach to healthy place-shaping and its evolving evidence-base.  The intention is that healthy place-shaping becomes a routine part of planning in the county, and so the network will be drawn from officers with specialist knowledge of implementing healthy place-shaping and our various local authority planning departments as well as from the NHS, public health, and other partners.  A lead officer and a chief executive sponsor will be appointed to coordinate this approach across the work of the Growth Board and the Housing and Growth Deal; 

 

(e)      hold a county-wide workshop for senior councillors and officers on this topic, as set out in programme for the Joint Statutory Spatial Plan.  This will scope further the potential for this approach and will help to define how it will be included in the Joint Statutory Spatial Plan when it goes for public consultation in February 2019.  This should be convened jointly with the Health and Wellbeing Board, which will further serve to strengthen joined-up planning across all organisations; and 

 

(f)        consider how capacity to assist with implementing the healthy place-shaping strategy should be funded. 

Supporting documents:

 

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