AMBITIOUS plans to put so-called “healthy housing” at the heart of Northumberland County Council’s planning system have been unveiled.

According to the Town and County Planning Association’s Campaign for Healthy Homes, many homes and neighbourhoods built today “undermine residents’ health and wellbeing”.

This was blamed on the fact that standards don’t guarantee that new homes “provide for residents basic human needs” such as access to green space, local services and clean air.

In Northumberland, residents have expressed to the council that communities do not have access to suitable affordable housing. A new report states that this presents an “opportunity” to write a new housing strategy for the county focusing on healthy housing.

As part of this, the council is aiming to be “exemplary” in the development and delivery of new houses. With more than 8,000 properties in its portfolio, it is already one of the largest social housing providers in the county.

Presenting the report at Thursday’s meeting (January 11) of the council’s health and wellbeing board, the council’s cabinet member for planning Colin Horncastle explained the role planning has to play.

He said: “This is stepping up from the past into the future. If you think about the way local authorities have worked in the past, we have different departments such as housing, highways and finance.

“They all do their job and they do it very well – but how many times have we said they need to talk to each other – and that is what this is all about. We have got to look at the implications of large planning applications and new housing estates.

“What can we do to make sure the people who end up living in them have a better life experience? We have to look at areas like a public area, green spaces, all those things to give people a better life.

“I’m sure we can make it work – it’s a new concept but if we look at other departments in the council, there’s no reason at all planning can’t get involved and make a better life for people.”

The council’s director of planning, Rob Murfin, added: “It is a real challenge, I want to make that clear upfront. We do refuse applications on the basis of things like flood risk and design, but it is a test of ‘are things bad enough to refuse?’ We want to get schemes that are good enough to approve.

“When we talk about health inequality, many people think about inequality in terms of access to services, but ill health exposes itself in many different places. Good quality homes are key to a good quality life.

“We have known what we have to do for a long time. Are we up for the fight and up for tackling this? Are we going to say no to housing quality that we do not feel is good enough?

“We often talk about retrofitting older houses, but if we’re not careful we will be building houses this week that we know need retrofitting to meet modern standards.”