Should developers should be stumping up more cash for health?

Plymouth councillor says yes given all homes planned

Developers should contribute more to healthcare when they secure land for homes, a Plymouth councillor has said.

Leader of the city council’s independent group Patrick Nicholson (Plymouth St Mary) has called on the authority to push the government to look into it as part of its planning reforms.

He said there is a clear agenda for more homes, yet what the money from developers for improving healthcare is “wholly inappropriate and insignificant”.

Housebuilders have to make payments for community assets such as road improvements, education and sport facilities as part of planning consent, as well as providing affordable homes depending on the size of the development.

Plymouth has to build 5,000 homes over the next five years under new government targets as Labour aims to build 1.5 million properties over the course of this parliament.

At the council’s health and wellbeing board, Cllr Nicholson said: “The money for health is minuscule compared to contributions to affordable housing, highways and other things.

“I think the health community should be looking for greater contributions to health infrastructure.

“By raising this with government, it would be one way of addressing the funding deficit we have.”

Last October, council leader Tudor Evans (Lab, Ham) asked for NHS Devon to review the way health funding is allocated to the city to address health equality.

He said people in Plymouth live two years less than people elsewhere in Devon, a situation exacerbated by  “more than a decade of NHS underfunding”.

The council has lobbied Devon ICB, a body that aims to join up health and care services, to “allocate funding fairly”.

It also set up a dental task force in 2023 to respond to the city’s dentistry crisis in which more than 22,000 adults and children are waiting to see an NHS dentist.

It has been working with Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise to provide a new £5 million urgent care and education practice in the former First Stop Shop in New George Street.

One Devon,  a collaboration of the NHS, local councils and other organisations  aims to increase what it calls ‘dental activity’ by 25 per cent in the next three years.

It says by 2028  all disadvantaged groups will have access to check-ups every 24 months for adults, and 6 to 12 months for children, as well as enough capacity to meet urgent care.

Cllr Mary Aspinall (Lab, Sutton and Mount Gould) said the city would push for that timeframe to be speeded up.