Britain's buildings and public spaces are encouraging obesity and public health problems, according to the government's chief architecture adviser who has demanded that new developments be designed to improve the nation's fitness.

John Sorrell, chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, said a lack of prominent staircases in new commercial and public buildings, inadequate exercise facilities in schools and streetscapes that discourage walking and cycling, are putting unnecessary strain on a public health system which is increasingly being forced to cope with disease caused by sedentary lifestyles.

He criticised shopping centres ringed with acres of car parking which make it almost impossible to walk to the shops rather than drive.

Once at the centre, he said shoppers are too often encouraged to use escalators rather than stairs. "There is a divergence between physical regeneration efforts and the wider public health agenda," he said. "Shaping and using the built environment for the promotion of health is either barely mentioned, or viewed too narrowly as merely a question of where to locate health facilities, rather than how to use the built environment as a tool for reducing demand on those facilities."

Sorrell's call for healthier environments looks set to be his first public campaign since he was appointed in December to advise the government on the design of schools, hospitals and public spaces. Cabe also scrutinises the design of large new civic and commercial buildings.

His message was backed by public health professionals.

"There needs to be a return to the interaction between buildings and our health," said Selwyn Hodge, deputy chairman of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health. "Busy life-styles have created buildings which have factored out healthy living. Shopping centres and supermarkets are anti-pedestrian and in rural environments we have new estates with no footpaths."

Mr Sorrell said the solution was a new era of "preventative design". He said educationalists should reappraise the facilities they provide in school grounds and include more popular elements such as skate parks.

"When I look at a group of new schools, I see how we are going to impact on the future health of children by how we design now," he told the newspaper Building Design. "Most of the focus is on the intellectual health, but it should be on the physical too. Obviously it's about playgrounds and playing fields, but its also about stairs and the kind of social facilities on offer. For example, I haven't yet found a school with a skatepark, but a lot of children like that, maybe more who like skating than like tennis."

He argued that public investment in a built environment that encourages exercise would be repaid to the taxpayer through a reduced burden on the health service in treating illness caused by a lack of activity.

The pressure for a new approach comes amid growing fears about obesity, with the condition causing 30,000 deaths a year. In 2002, the National Audit Office estimated that the condition costs the health service £200m a year.