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  • Building Health Equity: The Role of the Property Sector in Improving Health

    Created: 16/01/2025
    News/Events Category: Health and Social Care


    A ground-breaking new report by the University College London (UCL) Institute of Health Equity (IHE) highlights the profound impacts – both positive and negative – that housing has on health and wellbeing.

    Building Health Equity: The Role of the Property Sector in Improving Health lays out how poor quality and inequitable access to homes that people can afford is linked with worse mental and physical health, whereas increased availability of secure, affordable, warm homes can improve long-term health and longevity. 

    The IHE’s report, which has been sponsored by Legal and General, proposes a new way forward to enable the property sector and national and local governments to put health, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability at the centre of how the UK builds and maintains homes, designs neighbourhoods, and fosters communities. This is crucial because:

    • A record number of children are now living in temporary accommodation – up 14.7% to 150,000 in England last year. Moving home often means moving school, which adversely affects educational attainment, life chances and, ultimately, life expectancy
    • The lack of affordable and good-quality homes is costing society £18.5 billion a year, through poor educational achievement, loss of productivity, and on-cost to health and care services, which includes £1.4 billion a year to the NHS treating people for preventable housing-related ill health, such as lung and heart conditions
    • In absence of any change, economic activity due to sickness could almost double from 2.8 million people to 4.3 million by 2029

    National government, the review highlights, plays a crucial role in supporting planning, development and retrofit, and must prioritise affordable, healthy homes and places in its push to deliver 1.5 million homes in five years.

    Property investors, developers, and operators also play a vital role through the quality, desirability, and sustainability of the homes they create and maintain, and through the support and facilities they offer to residents, communities, and local areas.  

    Building Health Equity focuses on how housing affects health in three ways: through quality, supply and affordability. It offers practical ways to address the UK’s dire need for good quality, affordable, and accessible new houses to be built that meet local needs, and for existing homes to be retrofitted and refurbished.  

    The report also explores the benefits of protecting and enhancing biodiversity and providing access to community spaces and essential services. Health is best supported when people have access to a sufficient supply of affordable, good quality housing in places which support social cohesion, while protecting biodiversity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  

    Click here to read the full report.




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