Vision: The North East environment will be the most conducive to health in the country, maximising its natural resources to the best advantage of its people, and designing its economy, buildings, spaces, transport and other infrastructure to maximise health and well-being in a sustainable fashion.

The Regional Advisory Group for economy, culture and environment will be the Health Forum itself, augmented by specific task groups appointed to examine specific thematic areas. This group will also play a role in synthesis and oversight of all health and well-being themes, and will maintain an overview of action on inequalities and fairness.

Economy

• We will support a regional debate on how value for money should be judged, and how costeffectiveness should be defined when considering health and well-being objectives in our region.
• We will press the case that the primary purpose of the North East economy should be to improve the health and well-being of its population, and that the region’s “clear and succinct set of priorities” for the forthcoming Integrated Regional Strategy should reflect this. As a consequence, we will aim to include within those priorities measures such as ‘Gross Quality of Life’, employment quality in terms of locus of control, social capital and employer/workplace health-improving behaviours.
• We will promote measures of regional success to facilitate prioritisation of health and well-being.
• We will develop health and well-being criteria to be used in assessing regional economic and structural developments.

Regional research and development

• We will integrate public sector health and well-being research and development with regional needs, so that we pursue a common agenda across organisations.
• As part of the forthcoming Integrated Regional Strategy for the North East, we will work with the region’s universities and the NHS to help develop a single, collaborative strategy to achieve world-class health and health care research status for the North East.

Health care research in the region

• We will work at least to double NHS North East’s share of national health and health carerelated R&D investment over the next five years.
• Since involvement in clinical studies improves clinical standards, such involvement will become available to all patients in all health care facilities in the region. With NHS chief executives in the region we will set standards to ensure that this becomes the case.
• We will establish a collective, annually renewable, contract to specify regional research work geared to public health delivery needs. This will be a formal commissioning agreement comprising an infrastructural (people and support) and activity (specific projects) element based on full economic costing.

Buildings, warmth and energy efficiency

• As part of the Annual Winter Health Protection Plan for the Region (see Later life theme) we will promote far more actively the uptake of Warm Front and other insulation schemes across the region.
• In collaboration with key partner agencies we will set targets for uptake of Warm Front and other such grants.

Energy

• We will work with regional partners to establish regional energy goals, related to the alleviation of fuel poverty, reduction of inequalities in health and wealth and minimisation of excess winter deaths.
• We will aim to set a goal over several decades, as technologies and their efficiency improve, to achieve the lowest possible energy dependence and greatest energy-independence for households in the North East, seeking to place health and well-being of individuals at the heart of policies for regional sustainability.
• We will work to agree targets for our region to have the warmest homes with lowest energy consumption.

A physically active environment

• The North East will effect the most rapid implementation of NICE guidance on physical activity and the environment.
• We will establish a collaboration to support and fund the governing bodies of all the region’s schools in improving their play areas and in other design activities that will increase physical activity.
• We will develop a regional policy for increasing access to casual opportunities for non-school based, safe, supervised play and develop an approach to returning ‘domestic’ streets to their former use as communal areas and not merely thoroughfares.
• We will work to ensure that regional strategies incorporate standards and targets for creating supervised play space, including domiciliary road usage.
• We will work to ensure that regional strategies specify that all new buildings should be constructed with prominence and preference given to design aspects that will favour, without detriment to disabled access, physical activity among those able to benefit.

Transport

• We will lobby for cycle lanes to be given ‘double yellow line’ status to prevent their obstruction by parked vehicles; and for the norm in road building within the region to be the development of separate cycle lanes alongside motor vehicle provision.
• We will work to establish measures for assessing cost-effectiveness of road and traffic schemes that allocate values in accordance with health and well-being objectives, removing the current tilt toward car usage in assessments. We will lobby for these considerations to be built into national decision-making.
• We will address the ways in which costs and benefits of new traffic schemes and other urban design issues are calculated to remove biases and perverse incentives that obstruct shifting priority to walking, cycling and public transport.
• We will develop regional targets to increase walking, cycling and use of public transport, and will work to ensure that within the forthcoming Integrated Regional Strategy high priority is given to developments that increase these modes and discourage car usage.

Potential areas of action for RAG consideration: Pollution – Climate change – Green spaces – Natural environment – Extension of Darlington’s experience and expertise in transport modal shift – Reconciling business and economic expansion with a healthier environment – Regional Employability Framework