Irene Beautyman, Place and Wellbeing Partnership Lead, discusses If land use planning is Scotland’s most overlooked preventative public service.
Across the UK, there is growing recognition that improving public services means thinking differently about place. Whether through the UK Government’s renewed emphasis on place-based public service reform or the long-standing advocacy of leaders such as Andy Burnham, there is increasing consensus that prevention, collaboration and better outcomes depend on understanding the places where people live their lives.
Much of that conversation focuses on how organisations work together in places. That is an important shift, and one I explored in my previous blog.
But there is another question that deserves equal attention.
If place is central to public service reform, what shapes the places themselves?
Few public functions have more influence over that than land use planning. Yet planning is rarely discussed as part of public service reform.
Perhaps it should be.
When the public think about public services, they tend to think about the NHS, social care, education or emergency services. They rarely think about planning. Yet land use planning influences many of the factors that determine whether people live healthy, connected and fulfilling lives, long before they need support from any of those services.
Land use planners know that their decisions shape where homes are built, whether neighbourhoods encourage walking, wheeling and cycling, access to green space, the location of schools and services, opportunities for social connection, and the resilience of communities to climate change. These decisions influence health, wellbeing and inequalities, but they also influence something else that is central to public service reform: future demand for public services.
That makes planning much more than a statutory process for managing development.
It makes planning one of Scotland’s most important opportunities for prevention.
The Public Service Reform Strategy rightly places prevention at the heart of reform. Prevention is often understood as intervening earlier through public services, but land use planning reminds us that prevention begins even earlier. It begins by creating the conditions that enable people and communities to thrive before problems emerge.
Every planning decision has the potential to strengthen, or weaken, neighbourhoods where people can safely walk to local services, where children can play, where homes are warm and affordable, and where communities have access to nature, employment and everyday amenities. All this is likely to generate very different long-term outcomes from one characterised by car dependency, poor connectivity or unequal access to opportunities.
These are not simply planning outcomes.
They are public service outcomes.
In my previous blog, I described how the Place and Wellbeing Outcomes provide a shared understanding of the characteristics every place should offer if people are to thrive. They help partners across sectors understand what they are collectively trying to achieve.
Land use planning is one of the principal ways those outcomes can be delivered and its work is well placed to lead stronger collaborations with other crucial contributors.
Every new neighbourhood, regeneration project, transport investment or major development is an opportunity either to strengthen the Place and Wellbeing Outcomes or to make them harder to achieve. Decisions made today will influence health, wellbeing and inequalities for decades to come, shaping future demand for health, social care and other public services.
As the debate about place-based public service reform gathers pace across the UK, we have an opportunity to broaden what we mean by “place”. Place is not simply the setting in which organisations collaborate. It is something we actively shape through decisions about land use and development.
Seen in this light, planning is not simply a contributor to public service reform; it is one of the ways public service reform is delivered.
Scotland is well placed to lead this conversation. National Planning Framework 4 provides a strong policy foundation, while the Place and Wellbeing Outcomes offer a practical framework for considering how planning decisions contribute to healthier, fairer and more sustainable places.
The preparation of new Local Development Plans provides a timely opportunity to turn these ambitions into action. As planning authorities across Scotland develop plans to deliver National Planning Framework 4, they have a unique opportunity to embed health, wellbeing and the wider determinants of health into decisions about where and how development takes place. The choices made through these plans will shape communities for years to come and play an important role in determining whether Scotland’s ambitions for prevention and public service reform are realised in practice.
Local Development Plans are more than planning documents. They are long-term investment strategies for places. They influence where homes, jobs, schools, green infrastructure, transport and community facilities are located, creating the conditions that will either support or undermine wellbeing and equality for decades.
The opportunity now is to connect these agendas more explicitly, recognising land use planning not simply as a planning function, but as a strategic preventative public service.
If we are serious about prevention, reducing inequalities and creating sustainable public services, we need to recognise that some of our most important public service decisions are made long before anyone enters a hospital, contacts social care or needs crisis support.
They are made when we decide what kind of places we create.
Perhaps it is time we recognised land use planning as Scotland’s most overlooked preventative public service.