Regeneration of Broadwater Farm

Supporting the development of a shared vision for transformation

Local Partnerships have supported a variety of councils, and transformation projects through the LGA’s Sector Support Improvement programme funded by the UK Government. These case studies explore the key activities and learnings from these projects and highlight both best practice and common challenges.

Case Study 7 – Maximising health and wellbeing benefits in the regeneration of Broadwater Farm

Haringey Council’s regeneration of Broadwater Farm is a long-term transformation project. The Council have committed to spend £230 million on improving the estate over the next seven years and work is progressing on providing new homes, refurbishing existing housing blocks and improving safety and shared spaces.

The regeneration programme has four key elements

• building new homes
• refurbishment and retrofit of existing homes
• socio-economic projects and programmes
• improving core housing services on the estate including repairs and community safety and access to council services

It is recognised that regeneration of the estate is therefore wider than “bricks and mortar”, and the successful delivery of each of these elements has the potential to improve the health and wellbeing of residents on the estate.

The challenge

The Council wishes to place the link between housing and health front and centre of the regeneration programme, including transforming the wider determinants of health, the social, economic and environmental factors that influence health, well-being and inequalities. In this context, health does not just refer to an absence of ill health but includes all those factors that contribute to wellbeing, such as access to greenspace and healthy food, community connections and opportunities to participate fully in education, employment and cultural activities. There is a body of evidence that links successful regeneration and placemaking with health and wellbeing, including Town and Country Planning Association’s Healthy Homes Principles, Department for Transport’s Healthy Streets and Social Life/ Design Council’s Healthy Placemaking.

The challenge was to identify and evaluate all the activity being undertaken by the Council and its partners to promote and enhance health and wellbeing on the estate, alongside the physical regeneration programme, to be able to prioritise and maximise the health and wellbeing benefits of the transformation programme.

The solution

We carried out a broad review of the activities supporting health and wellbeing around and included in the regeneration programme, including what’s working well and where there were gaps. Recommendations were developed collaboratively to address gaps and promote best practice, accompanied by developing a draft dataset of indices measuring broad health and wellbeing, the data for which came from a range of partners, including the Council. This dataset will be measured annually, and results included in the regeneration programme’s Annual Report so progress can be tracked over the life of the transformation and new interventions planned if required.

The impact

The process of carrying out the work, as well as reviewing evidence and developing a dataset for measuring the progress of health and wellbeing benefits alongside the physical regeneration of Broadwater Farm, brought into focus specific local health and wellbeing issues. Addressing these issues, accompanied by the understanding that doing so is a collaborative effort including all parts of the Council and many of its partners, will now be incorporated into the Council’s regeneration approach.

How is the new approach to Broadwater Farm being sustained?

The Council will review and implement recommendations and adopt the dataset as a means of tracking progress over the life of the transformation.

Lessons learned

• We found a more expansive view of the benefits of the regeneration programme enabled us to secure greater stakeholder support
• Examining estate level data has helped us target our efforts to address locally important issues

More transformation case studies

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