Last night I attended the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Healthy Homes and Buildings roundtable debate discussing why building health homes and buildings is central to delivering the Government's 5 missions for change.

The purpose of the group is to bring together MPs and Peers of all parties together with policymakers, business leaders and industry experts to highlight the health and cost benefits which can be derived from constructing our buildings and homes to the highest levels of comfort, safety and energy efficiency. 

By the very nature of the group, all in attendance recognised the importance of housing and health, with a real range of expertise and specialisms. 

So what were my key takeaways?

• Housing needs to form part of the NHS plan, and health part of the housing plan. There HAS to be the interconnection between the two issues. This is something we/I have been speaking about for many years, but it feels now might be the time for Government to really put this in action.
• Whilst ensuring the new homes we build are healthy and suitable for long-term use (with the Government's ambitions to build 1.5 million new homes welcomed by all), we can't ignore the fact that most housing stock is and will be existing stock and we therefore need to apply lessons from how to build healthy homes to that stock and the retrofit works that are undertaken to those properties.
• When designing works/systems we need to think beyond the technical elements and really take into account how people use their homes and design around that. A great example was given about how the life cycle of loft insulation is reduced because it was fitted 30 years ago with an expectation people wouldn't use their lofts, but the reality is they do and need to, (see my loft for proof!) and that compresses the insulation reducing its long term value. 
• We need to ensure builds/works enable people to live in properties healthily for the whole of their life, particularly with the increased shift to care in the community: this is for all types of property, tenure and location.
• Education is key to ensuring everybody really understands how to use their homes in a healthy way. The language used here needs to be engaging and strike a chord, e.g. comfort, and affordable, to ensure there is mass support behind changes to make the difference needed.
• We also need to build good community facilities to help create a sense of community, which can also help improve health standards.
• A challenge for us all to do what we can to make sure it is easier to think holistically about what makes a healthy building: currently different issues are considered too much in isolation. 

Lots of food for thought, so it will be interesting to see how the APPG takes forward the comments and how this is reflected in legislation and parliamentary initiatives moving forward.