Expert Panel Outputs for 2025: Healthcare Expert Panel

Summary by Expert Panel Chair Anisha Mayor, WSP

This year the Healthcare Expert Panel continued and deepened the theme on Creating a longer healthier life expectancy through one of the six pillars of the NLA Agenda: Thinking Beyond Boundaries.

The backbone of this key theme is the creation of a cohesive blue and green masterplan as well as curating activities within those spaces across London because we know that the single biggest influencer to moving the dial on prevention is access to nature. This theme also clearly supports the NHS’s three-shift reform and in particular the move from sickness to prevention.

The second theme centred on Setting up projects for success by maximising the skills of London NHS estates and development teams. For health to be more central to the fabric of development and planning in London, the panel identified that it would be of benefit both to NHS Trusts and also the GLA and its constituent councils that NHS Trusts were given the tools to develop their voice in positioning within for example Local Plans and increase their ability to lead and be part of successful developments across our capital.

Creating a longer healthier life expectancy through Thinking Beyond Boundaries.

The Panel spearheaded the idea of hosting a symposium on Health Creating Cities, which has fed into a 2026 NLA research and events programme on this subject. As population health is not the sole responsibility of the NHS, the NLA has the prime opportunity to bring together the thoughts and experience of all 15 NLA expert panels because to truly provide the conditions for a health creating city, we must think across sectors of the built environment – think beyond boundaries.

As a result some of the healthcare expert panel have participated in an NLA Health Creating City roundtable with a diverse set of expert voices on this pivotal subject in April and an NLA Breakfast Talk in October with NHS and Built Environment leads.

Setting up projects for success by maximising the skills of London NHS estates and development teams

Together with the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction at UCL, we have developed a self-evaluating complexity assessment prototype for NHS Trusts to categorise the complexity of a project, match the skills within a project team that are required for its successful delivery.

Aside from the NHS who benefits from a cohesive green and blue masterplan across London?

Employers: If local populations are healthier for longer, they can be more economically active. If people have access to better healing environments, they can re-enter the job market to increase economic productivity
Education system: If better quality green and blue spaces mean that we give children a better start in life, this will directly impact their long-term healthy life-expectancy chances
High Streets: Having better green and blue spaces in and around our high streets are more likely to bring local populations to the area and increase their access to healthcare particularly as there is a drive to move more care away from acute hospitals and into the community
Housing: If more people are economically active, there is likely to be less pressure on social housing demand
GLA: With a more cohesive green and blue masterplan, the drive to Net Zero can be tracked more easily and be sustained as it would coalesce S106 and CIL monies and could also potentially drive greater collaboration on what happens in those spaces through a range of initiatives across e.g. the third sector (VCSEs / micro VCSEs working in collaboration with ICBs)

Who benefits from a self-evaluating complexity assessment for estates and redevelopment projects:

Trust redevelopment and estates teams: The tool addresses both the technical skills and governance gaps according to the complexity of any given project, giving Trust teams a clear understanding of what good looks like whilst also equipping them with the ability to challenge throughout the design development process.

The GLA and its constituent councils: If Trusts are better at influencing Local plans and submitting robust planning applications, developments could potentially happen at a faster rate and health can be integrated into the tapestry of London’s neighbourhoods from the outset and not just restricted to the development of hospitals but included within other sector redevelopment schemes.

Creating a longer healthier life expectancy through Thinking Beyond Boundaries

We will be taking forward the theme of Health Creating Cities in 2026 and within our healthcare expert panel include voices beyond the NHS and those in the built environment serving the NHS. These could range from DEFRA / Natural England, MHCLG, DCMS to technology providers such as Google Health / City Mapper who can potentially take the strategy through to implementation via a pilot in a particular area of London.

Setting up projects for success by maximising the skills of London NHS estates and development teams

In 2026, we will be testing our self-evaluating complexity assessment prototype with NHS Trusts in London. Once ratified and complete, the ambition is also to embed the tool within NHS frameworks so that the framework provider can also post the relevant technical and governance questions to the recruiting NHS client before calling-off the necessary resource.