Healthy towns will be built to fight obesity and improve elderly care

Where you live can has a huge impact on your health, and that hasn't gone unnoticed by the government. The NHS will ensure 'healthy towns' are built across the country by 2030 to help nearly 200,000 people. The health service believes that by helping to shape the way towns are built in the future, major healthcare problems, from obesity to dementia, can be addressed.

The plans feature virtual care homes – created by connecting houses to one another by Wi-Fi, allowing elderly residents to talk to carers and other people in surrounding houses. Roads would be made much easier to navigate with special signs, which would create 'dementia-friendly communities'.

But it's not just elderly people who will benefit: children would be encouraged into more healthy lifestyle choices with adventure-playground-style streets to ensure walking is seen as fun rather than a chore. And the areas surrounding schools would be declared fast-food-free zones.

There have been attempts to reduce fast food businesses near schools in the past but these have been hampered by the legal difficulties of shutting down existing businesses. This wouldn't be an issue in the new towns.

"The much-needed push to kick start affordable housing across England creates a golden opportunity for the NHS to help promote health and keep people independent. As these new neighbourhoods and towns are built, we'll kick ourselves if in ten years' time we look back having missed the opportunity to "design out" the obesogenic environment, and "design in" health and wellbeing."

He stressed that the NHS wants places where children can play with friends, safely walk or cycle to school and have alternative entertainment to playing video games. Ten new 'healthy towns' have been announced. These include:

Whitehill and Bordon, Hampshire: 3,350 homes on a former army barracks, including "care-ready homes" adapted for people with long-term conditions

Darlington: 2,500 homes across three linked sites in the town's "eastern growth zone", including a "virtual care home"

Cranbrook, Devon: 8,000 homes, with healthy lifestyles taught in schools from a young age.

Ebbsfleet Garden City, Kent: up to 15,000 homes in the first garden city for 100 years

Barking Riverside: 10,800 homes on London's largest brownfield site

Bicester, Oxfordshire: 393 houses in the Elmsbrook project, part of 13,000 planned homes

Northstowe, Cambridgeshire: 10,000 homes on former military land

Whyndyke Farmin Fylde, Lancashire: 1,400 homes

Barton Park, Oxford: 885 homes

Halton Lea, Runcorn: 800 homes

Two years ago, chancellor George Osborne promised to make Ebbsfleet in Kent the first garden city in a century. So Simon Stevens decided to seize on the project as a way of helping people live healthier lives. He believes preventing disease caused by poor lifestyles could save the NHS from bankruptcy. Professor Kevin Fenton, the national director for health and wellbeing at Public Health England, says:

"Some of the UK's most pressing health challenges – such as obesity, mental health issues, physical inactivity and the needs of an ageing population – can all be influenced by the quality of our built and natural environment. The considerate design of spaces and places is critical to promote good health. This innovative programme will inform our thinking and planning of everyday environments to improve health for generations to come."

Detailed plans are expected within six months as the NHS works with councillors and developers to get planning permission. It's hoped building should begin by the end of 2016.

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