Health Impact Assessments

A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is used to check the impact that a proposed development may have on health and wellbeing.

The findings of HIAs are used to make recommendations to scheme decision makers about how:

• positive health impacts may be increased

• negative impacts may be reduced.

When is a HIA required?

Policy DC3 of the Darlington Borough Local Plan 2016 – 2036 requires a Health Impact Assessment:

• in the case of development of 150 or more homes and

• for all other non-residential major development.

Guidance Documents

Our guidance is divided into three parts:

1. Development Guidance Note

2. Comprehensive Health Impact Assessment Tool

3. Ward Level Health Themes Table

The Development Guidance Note [pdf document] contains further details on what a HIA is:

• covers the principles that should be applied when creating one
• suggests best practice guidance that can be used to improve the health and wellbeing outcomes of a development.

 

The Comprehensive Health Impact Assessment Tool [pdf document]

• provides a pdf matrix that can be used to create a HIA to submit with a planning application for a major development.

 

The Ward Level Health Themes Table [pdf document]

• produced by the Public Health Team
• provides an overview of health and wellbeing priorities in Darlington’s council wards
• can be used to focus HIAs on certain issues, but should not be used to screen out lesser health and wellbeing issues.

 

HIA process (short film)

Officers were invited to contribute to a series of short films to talk about the HIA process.  They featured a range of planning and public health professionals. The films were produced by the University of Bristol for TRUUD (Tackling Root Causes Upstream of Unhealthy Urban Development).