How health-focused planning policies spread

Read Meadhbh's full report here and an overview of key findings below.

In recent years, the conversation about how our built environment shapes our health has moved firmly into the mainstream. Since 2024, England’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) now puts it plainly: local planning authorities should refuse new hot food takeaway (HFT) applications near schools, youth gathering places, or in areas where concentrations of takeaways are harming local health or fuelling anti‑social behaviour.

Before the NPPF: when health policy was a local choice

Before 2024, earlier NPPF iterations only encouraged – rather than required – planning to support healthier lifestyles. That meant any restrictions on takeaways happened at local discretion, but many Local Government Areas (LGAs) across England were already taking action.

LGAs restricting HFTs for using health and obesity criteria specifically often had these key elements in common:

• deprivation,
• high childhood obesity,
• denser urban environments, and
• political appetite to intervene.

They were also often regionally clustered (Keeble et al 2019).

One notable cluster of LGAs in the Northeast of England is the focus of this research. In this area, between 2015 and 2017, early adopters Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside and South Tyneside Councils introduced planning policies in quick succession that restricted new HFTs around schools and in areas with high obesity rates..

Using data from document review and in-depth interviews with local planners and public health officials, this study examines what helped these policies spread, and why the planning reforms now underway could reshape how local planning policies travel in future.

Why these policies spread: eight factors behind the North East’s success

The research uncovered eight interconnected factors that enabled planning policy transfer in this case.

1. Cross‑authority governance and networking
2. Similarity of local context and evidence base
3. Previous takeaway policies
4. Importance of precedent
5. Political impetus and timing
6. Local or individual advocacy
7. Collaboration with public health
8. Relative lack of opposition
   
   

The looming challenge: planning reform

Significant changes lie ahead. The Levelling‑up and Regeneration Act (2023) phases out SPDs—the very tool that made rapid, flexible policy innovation possible. Three of the four LGAs within this study – including the earliest two – introduced their health-oriented HFT planning restrictions through SPDs.

Future Supplementary Plans will require formal examination and new health-focused policies may need to wait for alignment with other Local Plan elements before they can be considered, examined and adopted.

In other words, the type of voluntary policy transfer seen in the Northeast may become rarer. Planning policy transfer in future may be more likely to be coercive – in response to regulatory alignment – rather than voluntary.

What this means for the future

This research shows how health‑focused planning policy can spread when conditions are right, including:

• strong networks,
• credible evidence,
• political appetite, and
• passionate individuals.

It also highlights how national reforms may reshape the landscape—potentially shifting innovation away from the local level and into more centralised processes through Mayoral Combined Authorities or new spatial development strategies (MHCLG, 2025).

The implications of this extend broader than HFTs, but as food environments continue to evolve faster than planning policies and defy traditional use classes within regulations (e.g. the growth of delivery-based commercial kitchens), planning authorities will need both agility and cross‑sector collaboration to keep planning relevant in tackling obesity and creating healthier places.