The rise of ‘Impact Assessments’

What we’ve been pondering is why. Why are we seeing more of these assessments, what do Councils actually want us to tell them and, perhaps most importantly, is this just another tick-box exercise?

Whilst the different reporting methods can make for some pretty cumbersome processes, and a one-size-fits-all questionnaire can sometimes lead to a lot of seemingly unnecessary form filling, at the heart of it I think what’s being asked of us is something much simpler. Something that, when I signed up to this profession, I thought Town Planning was all about: trying to create nice places for people to live and work.

Thinking about who will live here.

Yes, policies and guidance quite rightly ensure environmental measures are met, that design is high quality and that development works for the wider community. But what the rise of impact assessments is doing is asking us to think more about who is actually going to live here and how we can make their lives better through the choices we make now.

Larger schemes, and I’m talking about the biggies, 1,000+ homes, have long allowed us to think about the end user in this way, though socio-economic chapters in Environmental Statements (and it’s a ‘watch this space’ when it comes to how the switch to Environmental Outcomes Reports effect that over the next year or so). I genuinely enjoy getting my teeth into the statistics of a local population and understanding its make-up. Spending hours sifting through Office for National Statistics data might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but I can’t help but take delight in creating my own little snapshot of the local community.

What does the age profile look like? Where are the areas of deprivation? Are there particular health inequalities? What pressure is there on local schools, healthcare, open space or sports facilities? And then, importantly, what can we actually do about it?

I was fortunate enough to prepare the socio-economic chapter for a large residential-led scheme in West London a few years back. Because we were also coordinating the EIA, I could get stuck into the number crunching right from the screening stage because we knew what was going to be expected of us.

That early involvement made a real difference. We were able to sit in inception meetings and say, look, there are some really meaningful supporting uses we could include in this scheme which could help address real, on-the-ground shortages or challenges faced by the existing local community.

We were able to respond to a lack of nursery places, deliver a solution to an overbooked local football pitch and unlock a route to the local train station which, I don’t say this lightly, might even have encouraged my ‘carry me, carry me’ three-year-old to want to truly ‘play on the way’.

Because we understood that childhood obesity was such a stark reality in the existing community surrounding the site, we were also able to go further than simply providing a Travel Plan and really think about what else could be done.

That, for me, is what I thought Town Planning was when I signed up.

But what about the mid sized schemes, the 180 flats we work on day in day out?

These schemes are sizable. They will bring a meaningful number of new residents into an area, but they cannot single-handedly tackle the health or social issues facing the existing community. Whilst the Local Plan can and should look to oversee the holistic approach, these mid-sized schemes have not typically required the same level of consideration of the end user that much larger developments are able to provide.

That’s where the HIA, and the growing variations of impact reporting, are coming in.

Councils and national guidance are increasingly asking: how will people live healthily here?

And yes, sometimes the 150 questions in a clunky Council form can feel like an unnecessarily cumbersome way of getting there. But I think that, at the heart of it, something really meaningful is peering its head out and asking us to think: if I lived here, what would help me make healthy choices?

Would a communal garden with a community growing scheme help people make better food choices? Would well-considered seating in a shaded garden mean that I might, just might, stop and speak with my neighbours? Could raised flowerbeds enable a wider proportion of the new community to get involved in taking ownership of their garden?

These are relatively small design choices, but they start to shift the conversation from simply providing a development to thinking about the experience of living there.

HIAs also give us the chance to crunch the numbers, the bit I bizarrely love, and understand the local context in more detail: how many school places are available, what healthcare provision looks like, where the local dentists and GPs are, what open space is accessible and whether there are existing pressures on local infrastructure.

That kind of exercise has historically been more closely associated with EIA-scale developments, but there is value in bringing some of that thinking into smaller schemes too. Not because a 180-home development is going to transform the health profile of an entire ward, but because the people who move into those 180 homes are still going to live somewhere, travel somewhere, use local services and interact with the community around them.

Are we getting the process right?

I do think we’re still a little way off nailing the way in which Councils ask us to present all of this information. I’ve become increasingly thankful to the authorities that allow you to prepare an HIA using the London Healthy Urban Development Unit’s Rapid Health Impact Assessment Tool — catchy, I know — partly because some of the alternatives, my oh my, are unwieldy.

There is a danger that, if we’re not careful, the assessment becomes an exercise in completing 150 boxes rather than actually thinking about the people who will live in the development.

The assessment should be proportionate to the development and, importantly, capable of influencing it. The best impact assessment isn’t necessarily the one with the most pages; it is the one that makes someone sit in a design meeting and ask whether we have really thought about what this will be like for the people living here.

And what does the new NPPF say?

How could I write this in the wake of the new NPPF and not at least mention its stance on all of this?

The August 2026 NPPF doesn’t suddenly require an HIA for developments above a particular threshold, nor does it create a blanket requirement for socio-economic impact assessments. What it does provide is a stronger policy basis for considering healthy, inclusive and liveable places, and for thinking about how development responds to health, inequalities, infrastructure, accessibility and the wider needs of communities.

For me, that reinforces something quite fundamental. Planning isn’t simply about whether a development can be built; it is also about what kind of place we are creating when it is built.

So, is it another tick-box exercise?

Sometimes, perhaps. We need to get better at making these assessments proportionate, avoiding unnecessary duplication and ensuring that the information being requested is genuinely capable of informing the development.

But I think there is something valuable in the direction of travel.

At their best, impact assessments give us a reason to stop and think beyond the red line: to understand the community that is already there, to think about the people who will move in and, crucially, to ask whether the decisions being made today could help those people live healthier, happier and more connected lives tomorrow.

The rise of the impact assessments is here to stay, and I for one am pleased about that.