A NETWORK of “healthy towns” designed to keep residents fit and limit the opportunities for eating fast and fatty food are being pioneered to reduce pressure on the NHS.
Simon Stevens, chief executive of the health service, sees the proposed towns as a way of cutting the burden on the NHS of caring for obese and elderly patients. He will outline his plans to 5,000 healthcare leaders at the Health and Care Innovation Expo in Manchester this week.
The towns envisaged by Stevens will have sufficient play parks, cycle routes, outdoor gyms and table-tennis tables to keep residents active. Fast-food shops will be banned near schools and there will be adequate sheltered housing, equipped with monitoring technology to allow doctors and nurses to check remotely on patients rather than them having to go into hospital.
Elderly residents will be encouraged to get out, with more benches in parks to allow them to rest, pavements with no kerbs to prevent them from tripping and non-slip surfaces for wet weather. As well as words, signs will carry pictures that dementia sufferers can recognise.
Unnecessary steps at the entrances to public buildings in healthy new towns will be banned and streets will be adequately lit to encourage residents to walk or cycle in the evening.
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“We need a lot more affordable housing over the coming years, so let’s build it in a way that combats obesity, helps support older people at home, and makes the most of amazing new digital health technologies,” Stevens told The Sunday Times.
“We need the design flexibility and creativity so that children can safely walk or cycle to school and play outside with friends — rather than just exercising their fingers on video games.
“We want to see neighbourhoods and adaptable home designs that make it easier for older people to continue to live independently wherever possible. And we want new ways of providing new types of local health services that share infrastructure and staff with schools, the fire service and community groups.”
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NHS England has invited local authorities, housebuilders and NHS clinical commissioning groups to submit proposals for healthy developments. NHS England will provide the successful bidders with town planning and public health expertise to help realise their plans.
So far 40 applications have been submitted and up to five new healthy towns will be chosen to showcase the concept. Some will have more than 10,000 houses, while villages with as few as 250 homes will also be considered.
Those working on schemes include Cranbrook new town in Devon where there are plans to build up to 20,000 new homes, and Ebbsfleet Garden City, a new town in Kent. Others include Old Oak Common and Park Royal, a regeneration development in west London, and Whitehill and Bordon, a regeneration town in Hampshire where 3,350 new homes are planned.
Stevens has warned that treating diseases caused by obesity, particularly diabetes, could financially cripple the NHS, which is already facing a £30bn shortfall by 2020.
Another drain on NHS funds is elderly patients occupying hospital beds because they cannot be looked after at home or in care homes.
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Doctors warn that, in some hospitals, more than a quarter of beds are taken up by so-called bed-blockers.
Stevens will say that helping the elderly live independently in sheltered housing and using technology to monitor their health and safety would drastically reduce hospital costs.
The Local Government Association supports the healthy towns initiative, with local public health chiefs now employed by local authorities.
Tam Fry, a spokesman for the National Obesity Forum campaign group, said the healthy new town plans needed to be properly implemented. “The new towns envisaged should look first to creating safe, well-lit and supervised walking routes leading not only to schools but to parks and open spaces where children can exercise,” he said.
“Safe cycle routes would be a bonus if traffic schemes allowed. The schools should not only have their individual play areas but, where space is at a premium, should have reasonable access to shared, all-weather and multipurpose playing fields. These must be accessible throughout the year.
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“Any junk fast-food outlet should be banned from within a 10-minute radius of schools.”
Additional reporting: Bénédicte Earl