Health Impact Assessments Guidance
A health impact assessment (HIA) is a tool used to ensure that the health and wellbeing of residents are considered as an integral part of the planning process. It allows the potential positive and negative impacts of proposed development to be identified, assessed and addressed at the earliest possible stage. By considering health at the outset of the planning process, developers can influence design and delivery, avoid delays and help create places that protect and enhance the health of residents, workers and visitors.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government - National Planning Policy Framework December 2024 (NPPF) emphasises the importance of health and wellbeing in planning and requires planning policies and decisions to aim to achieve healthy, inclusive and safe places. This includes promoting social interaction, ensuring safe environments and supporting healthy lifestyles through green infrastructure, active travel and sports facilities. It also requires planning policies to support local strategies that improve health, social and cultural wellbeing for all community members.
National planning practice guidance - GOV.UK - Healthy and safe communities - advises that a health impact assessment is a useful tool to use where there are expected to be significant impacts from development.
Policy LP8 of the West Suffolk Local Plan 2024-2041 (July 2025) requires proposals for new large-scale developments of 100 homes or more or five hectares or more of mixed use or non-residential development that are expected to have significant health impacts to submit a health impact assessment to the council. Submission of a HIA during the pre-application stage is encouraged. The HIA should demonstrate how the conclusions of the assessment have been designed into, and how they will be implemented through, the development.
The HIA should be proportionate to the scale and type of development and will be considered alongside other supporting documents and consultee responses when the application is determined.
How to complete a health impact assessment
The council is currently preparing planning guidance on how to carry out a HIA, what it should include, sources of relevant information and good practice to ensure that health and wellbeing is consistently and meaningfully integrated into the planning process. In the interim, while this work is being undertaken, the Department of Health - Health Impact Assessment Tools provides guidance and a useful template for carrying out an assessment.
In West Suffolk, a ‘rapid’ or ‘full’ HIA will normally be required where a HIA is needed to comply with policy LP8 Designing for health and wellbeing and impacts of new development. Applicants are encouraged to discuss the HIA requirements during pre-application discussions with planning officers to jointly agree requirements before the impacts of any proposal are assessed.
At this stage, it can also be considered if it is appropriate to integrate an HIA into a design and access statement or an environmental impact assessment (EIA).
More resources
- The Department of Health - Health Impact Assessment Tools provides guidance and a useful template for carrying out an assessment.
- The London Healthy Urban Development Unit, in conjunction with the NHS, publishes a NHS - Rapid Health Impact Assessment Tool and NHS - Healthy Urban Planning Checklist
Local information
- Health and Wellbeing Suffolk - Preparing for the Future: Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2022-2027
- Fingertips - Public health profiles - Department of Health and Social Care - Public Health Outcomes Framework (West Suffolk health profile)
- Healthy Suffolk - Housing and Health Needs Assessment (2024)
- Healthy Suffolk - Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
- Healthy Suffolk - Place Based Needs Assessment
- GOV.UK - Statistics at OHID (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities)
- Suffolk Observatory - Deprivation Report for West Suffolk
Department of Health and Social Care - Fingertips - Fingertips is a web-based resource that provides access to a wide range of health-related data in thematic profiles, including ‘Health Profiles’, which provide a snapshot overview of health for each local authority in England, and ‘Public Health Outcomes Framework’ which includes a wide range of indicators.