With London now a Tier 2 city, the challenges of Covid-19 and lockdown are even more heightened. With this backdrop, the NLA Expert Panel on Wellbeing assembled 14 industry experts (Via Zoom) for a follow-on discussion.

 

At the first panel session, there was widespread acknowledgment that the discussion around wellbeing needed to do more than just focus on tick boxes and must address the fundamental barriers to making long lasting change. The Panel decided to use the October session to focus on three key areas 1) Housing 2) Workspace 3) Planning and how we can ensure that we are bringing about societal change.

 

I kicked off by discussing the challenges faced when working in urban, dense town centres which are known to have a detrimental impact on our lives. Evidence shows that the debates around healthy places to live tend to focus on the usual metrics – space standards, access to public realm / amenities and ventilation. In my opinion, these are the basics that need to be delivered every scheme, every time. What we should really focus on is how socio-economic factors of our residents impact on their health and wellbeing and how as landlords and owners, we can continue to support, advice and signpost them. 

 

Michael Dariane, who leads on sustainability at Hilson Moran encouraged a debate around the future of offices and how we can improve them for today and the future generation of workers. As a practice, they have already modelled a number of scenarios to respond to the growing hybrid model of working from home and working from an office.

 

Shaun Andrews from Nexus Planning urged everyone to see health and planning as intrinsically connected, and as such, the latter must be at the forefront of how we make improvements. With changes on the way as part of the White Paper, Shaun states that this is a ‘golden opportunity’ to embrace the science, join the dots between  health inequality and deprivation and ensure new policies are taken through the social justice and health quality lens .

 

We discussed these at length, all in agreement that the state of Londoners mental wellbeing will be severely impact as a result of Covid-19 and now is the time to act. We argued that it is our responsibility to assess how our actions might be contributing in a negative way and be bold to call this out and act.

 

We concluded with a focus on being bolder – checking in with our people (staff or residents), making the case for wellbeing where we live, work and play; and making sure that the changes forthcoming to planning prioritise wellbeing.

Find out who forms part of the NLA Expert Panel on Wellbeing