Town planners and architects will today be told to give pedestrians and cyclists priority over cars in towns, and to design staircases that make people want to use them, as part of a radical move to make Britons more physically active.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has departed from its usual remit of advising on NHS treatments to produce guidance on the built environment with regard to health.
The organisation urges local authorities to crack down on vehicle use, by such means as charging and traffic calming.
The guidance was commissioned by the Department of Health, motivated by the obesity, cancers and heart disease that can accompany the sedentary lifestyle.
Inactivity, said Mike Kelly, director of Nice's centre for public health excellence, was estimated to cost roughly £8.2bn a year. He said 150 years ago planning had brought about fundamental shifts in public health by producing the conditions that helped eradicate certain infectious diseases. "This is a different problem that needs equally concerted action."
Nice guidance is not binding on town planners, but talks have begun with groups that can encourage implementation, and studies have shown there would be considerable savings to the NHS if people were encouraged to walk and cycle, Nice said. It recommends that new offices be linked to walking and cycling networks. It also expresses concern about stairways, which it says are often unattractive to use.
Philip Insall, director of Sustrans' active travel programme, is a member of the guidance committee. He said that while in Basel, Switzerland, only a quarter of trips in the city were by car "in a UK city of the same size it is probably two-thirds". Nice cited as a good example Leicester, where children are involved in designing streets safe to play in.
The government welcomed Nice's guidance. "One of the big challenges in tackling climate change is use of the private car and anything which encourages people to walk and cycle more will help," said Joan Ruddock, minister for climate change, biodiversity and waste at Defra.
