By Jennifer Steadman

ON Monday 9th March, I was privileged to have been invited to the Town and Country Planning Association afternoon tea event at The House of Lords.

The cross-party event was hosted by Lord Crisp KCB who is championing the Healthy Homes Private member’s bill.

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) is campaigning for a “Healthy Homes Act” in the UK to establish legal standards for new housing, ensuring they are safe, sustainable, and promote wellbeing.

This initiative demands that all new developments meet strict, 10-point principles regarding air quality, noise, space, and access to green, walkable, and secure spaces. Thousands of homes, built through Permitted Development, lack full planning scrutiny and are exposed to loopholes in building regulations.

The things in life that most take for granted, such as a home where natural light is available, windows that open to allow fresh air in are not always easily available when a council or private developer turns an office block into a residential property using a permitted development right. Developers will often squeeze in as many poorly constructed residencies into ageing office blocks to maximise rental income without a thought for who will have to live in them.

Imagine living somewhere where there was no access to a safe open space for your children to play and where the buildings that surround your home are industrial units operating early mornings and late nights or where the one window in your property opens out on to an internal walkway so you must keep your lights on all day.

Imagine you and your family living in an apartment that was once an office where the walls are so thin you can hear your next-door neighbour talking, sneezing, or snoring!

Imagine having so much black mould on the walls that you can scrape it off with your fingers because there is no proper insulation or ventilation in your home!

Children living in PDR buildings are more likely to suffer slow development, respiratory Illnesses due to poor indoor air quality, pneumonia, which is the leading cause of death for children under 5 (19% of deaths).

A study in 2024 by the Institute of Health Equity demonstrated that where you live plays a huge role in your health both mentally and physically. Poor housing costs the wider society at least £18.5 billion a year, through poor educational achievement, loss of productivity and on costs to health and care services, including £1.4 billion a year to the NHS. More than one in ten people in the UK (7.9 million people) live in homes that are ‘not decent’,

One resident interviewed during the research gave a heartbreaking description of living in their PD flat: ‘‘it’s not like a prison; it is a prison’.

In Harlow, Permitted Development Rights (PDR) have been used extensively to create over 1,000 ‘rabbit hutch homes’ through office-to-residential conversions. Buildings such as Terminus House which features in the TPCA booklet. We can also claim ownership of Edinburgh House, Temple House and Redstone House, recently renamed as Endeavour. This trend became particularly prominent around 2019–2020, with research from the Local Government Association (LGA) revealing that more than half (51%) of all new homes delivered in Harlow during that period were created via PDR. Harlow has been cited as one of the areas most affected by PDR build in England, paying what local representatives described as a “high price” for these rapid conversions. Terminus House and Pear Tree House in Harlow both feature in the TPCA booklet.

In Harlow, there are council-built properties that suffer similar conditions to those of PDRs. I am currently in conversation with one tenant who has black mould growing on her child’s bedroom walls and ceiling which has now crept onto the bedding and mattress leaving him susceptible to infections. Indeed, he has been hospitalised twice recently with breathing issues. In a three-bedroom house, the family, Mother and two sons are now sleeping in one bedroom because water is leaking through the ceiling which has affected the electricals in the second bedroom and the other is covered in mould.

In 2026 with Harlow council claiming to have caught up with all housing repairs, I find this story horrific and deeply upsetting that someone can be living in such squalid and dangerous conditions.

The TPCA argues that ‘health is made at home; hospitals are for repair’ advocating that a long-term approach to housing that reduces the need for emergency medical care.

Fiona Howie, TCPA’s Chief Executive makes it clear ‘the Campaign for Healthy Homes has always been about social justice. People would not choose to live in homes that jeopardise their health and wellbeing if they had other options’.

It is simply not a case of ‘trying to do better’ we ‘must’ do better. Nobody should have to live in a building that can easily be described as a ‘slum’.

For more information visit www.tpca.org.uk