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Linking social sustainability to health impacts within community-led housing – Phase One findings

Linking social sustainability to health impacts cover 160

This report by Social Life and OURI Labs looks at the Phase One health benefits of community-led housing in the context of increasing supply through disposing of surplus NHS land/estate, especially on two sites in south London.

After two years of project development, they launched a collaborative project funded by Impact on Urban Health, to address the question ‘What health and social value can be created through developing high-quality, community-led housing on NHS surplus land?’.

Set out in four phases, the project are working with NHS Estates teams, Property Services, and leaders in community-led housing to design and test a replicable appraisal model that helps NHS organisations understand the comparative benefit of developing community-led housing on their surplus land. The remaining phases will include

  • Semi-structured interviews with NHS stakeholders and land/estates decision-makers to understand the barriers and opportunities to unlocking NHS land for community-led housing.
  • Co-design of a social appraisal model that enables NHS organisations to compare the value of community-led housing against alternative uses of surplus land, whilst understanding what value must be captured for land to be released. This stage will aim to identify various use cases, and
  • Practical feasibility testing of the social appraisal model with key stakeholders. This will help understand how to put research findings into practice, with particular attention to addressing health inequalities in target communities across Lambeth and Southwark.

Drawing on Social Life’s social sustainability framework, the report also explores a variety of community led housing settings, from award-wining HAPPI designed cohousing at New Ground [a Housing LIN exemplar] to community land trusts and the work of Housing Design winner and Housing LIN sponsor, Archio, and their designs for Citizens House.

If you found this of interest, check out the presentation given by OURI Labs’s Sem Lee at the Housing LIN annual conference in Bristol earlier this year.