Bristol: Spatial Planning

• We aim to intervene at the city level to improve the way health impact and health inequalities are considered in local policies and plans, and to strengthen public engagement in decisions about urban development. We will evaluate the impact of our interventions and apply learning to other parts of the urban planning system, including other geographical areas. We hope that this will support creation of healthier places in the long term.We have three interventions in our case study city of Bristol:
  • Communicating health impacts of environmental features to influence a spatial regeneration framework.
  • Supporting community engagement with diverse publics for large scale urban development.
  • Supporting the integration of health into local development planning policies (‘local plans’)

Communicating health impacts of environmental features to influence the Frome Gateway spatial regeneration framework

Bristol City Council is developing the Frome Gateway spatial regeneration framework that will guide future development in an area of St Judes, Bristol.

Anna Le Gouais is our Researcher-in-Residence in Bristol City Council and works as part of the Frome Gateway project team. This role helps us understand decision-making for the framework and future development and enables us to identify opportunities to bring in health evidence to inform the design principles.

Taking a co-design and iterative approach, TRUUD are evaluating different design options by modelling the health impacts associated with different environmental features and sharing this with the design team.

We are evaluating the impact of this work through participant-observation in design meetings by our Researcher-in-Residence and semi-structured interviews with the design team.

Supporting community engagement with diverse publics for large scale urban development

Our Researcher-in-Residence in Bristol City Council, Anna Le Gouais, has been working with the Frome Gateway Engagement Steering Group to understand community engagement plans and activities. She has attended and supported community engagement events as part of the City Council’s project team. Reflections from these activities, and close working with council colleagues, have informed our evaluation activities.

The TRUUD public involvement team is leading on an evaluation which involves observations and semi-structured interviews with key people in the Frome Gateway project team conducting focus groups with members of the public to understand more about their experiences of public engagement during the Frome Gateway project, and their views and suggestions on how future engagement could be improved. A survey (the Live Local study) was also carried out which collected local residents’ views about engagement.

Evaluation involves observation and semi-structured interviews with key people in the Frome Gateway project team. We also conducted a local residents survey (the Live Local study) which collected views about engagement, and are conducting focus groups with members of the public to understand more about their experiences of engagement during the Frome Gateway project.

We are all working closely with Bristol City Council’s Frome Gateway team and feeding back our findings to them to support future phases of the Frome Gateway project.

Integrating health into local development planning policies (‘local plans’)

In collaboration with Bristol City Council we have conducted a review of seven local plans in England.

The review examines broad health references, specific developer requirements, references to Determinants of Health and developer implementation requirements in local plan policies.

Based on our review findings, we are feeding back recommendations for Bristol’s local plan, which is currently under development. We will evaluate the impact of this work through observation of meetings by the Researcher-in-Residence, and semi-structured interviews with officers and elected members in Bristol City Council.

Communicating health impacts of environmental features to influence the Frome Gateway spatial regeneration framework

This intervention should support creation of healthier environments in the Frome Gateway area for new residents, and also for existing residents living nearby. This is particularly important because the area surrounding Frome Gateway has some of the highest deprivation in the country.

We will share our learning with other local authorities, and relevant national policy and practice stakeholders to demonstrate how health evidence can be used to influence healthier place-making.

Supporting community engagement with diverse publics for large scale urban development

We will share our learning about conducting meaningful engagement with a wider audience across Bristol City Council, and other local authorities, to support more effective early-stage engagement in large urban development projects.

The health modelling tool being used in this project will be developed further to also support healthier place-making decisions elsewhere.

Integrating health into local development planning policies (‘local plans’)

We will share recommendations for healthier local plans with other local authorities.

We will create a ‘toolkit’ for using the review framework, and make this available to other local authorities evaluate their own local plans so they can support healthier urban development in their local areas.

Frome Gateway Framework Consultation

Health Impact Assessment Oct 2023

Dr Judi Kidger at the University of Bristol

Dr Emma Bird at the University of the West of England

Dr Anna Le Gouais at the University of Bristol

Dr Sophie Turnbull at the University of Bristol