Learning from Lockdown Roundtable: Lessons for Healthy Housing and New Settlements

Learning from Lockdown Roundtable: Lessons for Healthy Housing and New Settlements

On the 29^th June BBI hosted its Learning from Lockdown Roundtable, this time chaired by David Orr CBE from 10.30am to 12pm. This event comes at a pivotal time for housing and the future health and wellbeing of populations as we start to come out of the current pandemic and seek to learn the lessons from a prolonged period of lockdown, in particular, the impact of social isolation and loneliness on health and wellbeing and what this means for future housing and the creation and design of new housing programmes.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was increasing recognition that social isolation was taking a toll on mental health, public services and the economy. As a consequence of the nationwide lockdown, a significant portion of the population has now experienced some form of social isolation. Spending more time at home and being restricted to our local neighbourhoods has raised the critical importance of quality, healthy housing and safe communities that strengthen local connections and supports greater cohesion.

This is not a challenge just for the housing sector but for health, local government and business. Residents living in poor quality housing face a greater risk of COPD and other potentially fatal respiratory diseases and for those that are more isolated there is a much greater risk of prolonged periods in hospital or entry to residential care. The effect of poor quality housing on mental health is often under-appreciated at a system level.  And whilst the causes of COVID-19 related mortality are complex we do know that death rates in deprived areas are double those in least deprived areas.

The end of lockdown coincides with renewed Government efforts to replenish the nation’s housing stocks. The annual target of 300,000 new homes a year and existing garden settlements now sit alongside an ambition “to repurpose more commercial centres, offices and retail spaces into housing”. The coming months, therefore, are a critical time for us to learn lessons from the lockdown and get the balance right between competing voices and delivery objectives.

Over the past 18 months Breaking Barriers Innovations (www.bbi.uk.com), have been working with Portsmouth and MHCLG in developing a city-wide action plan to navigate the competing priorities of economic and social value. At this roundtable event, we would like to share our key findings and developments with a select number of stakeholders as we believe there are elements that will help the wider discussion alongside individual project delivery at this pivotal time in future housing investment.

This event introduced the key learning from the work in Portsmouth before examining how the planning and design of neighbourhoods can support wellbeing and strengthen communities.

In particular, this is a critical opportunity to bring together leaders in health, public health, planning, and housing to capture reflections and experiences of the challenges faced during the lockdown. There are three themes to explore:

1. What existing challenges faced in the design of socially connected places have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic?
2. The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown have highlighted the importance of one’s immediate built environment. How can an integrated approach among different stakeholders within local authorities and the NHS address existing and new issues in the built environment?
3. At what stage can communities take an active role in the design of new settlements? How do we shift from consultations with residents to resident-shaped design?

If you would be interested in learning more about this free event, please get in touch with Rahim Daya, Senior Programme Manager at BBI, at rahim.daya@bbi.uk.com or on 020 7603 5086.

DOWNLOAD THE EVENT SLIDE PACK

The following slides are a thematic review of anonymised comments from the day and BBI analysis of what this means going forward.

To download Breaking Barriers’ presentation please click on the link below.