Joint Spatial Plan must address public health issues, Bristol Health Partners urges

17th January 2018

The Joint Spatial Plan (JSP) is a rare opportunity to plan for a healthier future for the West of England, but Bristol Health Partners believes that the latest version of the plan doesn’t address public health issues strongly enough. The Bristol Health Partners response to the consultation, which closed on 10 January, urges planners to commit to deliberately building in health at this early stage.

While the latest version of the plan does make reference to the importance of public health, the detailed feedback that Bristol Health Partners made to the original consultation in 2016 has not been incorporated.

The original Bristol Health Partners submission, which was jointly supported by several Health Integration Teams (HITs), was an evidence-based response which included detailed proposals that local public health experts wanted to see included in the plan.

In a submission to the consultation on the latest version, Bristol Health Partners Director David Relph says:

“The Joint Spatial Plan is also a perfect opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to ‘Health in All Policies’ – an ambitious plan could yield positive results for the economy and environment as well as health. Opportunities to grasp these linked benefits come along rarely – the JSP is a perfect opportunity to do this and I urge you to look again at our original submission.”

The Health Integration Teams involved in the development of the Bristol Health Partners response include:

Download the Bristol Health Partners response to the Joint Spatial Plan consultation (PDF)