Review of spatial planning policy as an intervention for improving public health: protocol for a health-focused content review of local plans in England

IntroductionEach local authority in England is required to create a statutory local plan that sets out their land use priorities as the basis of decision-making on urban development. Only recently has there been an explicit recognition the local plan is capable of being a legal determinant of and important public policy intervention in influencing population physical and mental health and wellbeing. But there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of whether and how local plans have integrated wider determinants of health. The objective of this research is to identify and understand the state of current local plans in relation to health by undertaking a census. Methods and analysisThe review for England will involve a census of all local plans, and content and thematic analyses of a sample of local plans. This is subject to developing a review framework as the basis for gathering findings using a combination of query functions in PDF documents and data presentation in Excel, supported latterly by the computerassisted qualitative data analysis software, NVivo. The review framework will include a range of search parameters for identifying explicit health references across specified policy topics and wider determinants of health indicators as they relate to spatial planning based on an established evidence publication. A sampling strategy identifies inclusion and exclusion criteria to focus on local plans in England used in planning decision making. Results will be collected in qualitative and quantitative data formats. The results will be synthesised and discussed using a combination of qualitative data analytical strategies. Ethics and disseminationThe review is desktop based using publicly available policy documents on local authority websites, so ethics approval is not required. The results of the review will be reported in journal articles and for policy makers to improve national and local policy development.