Published on 6 November 2025, Healthy Homes — a foundation for healthier and resilient communities represents a turning point in how England thinks about housing design, public health, and climate resilience. Released at a time when damp, cold, mould, poor air quality, and overheating continue to affect millions, this guidance provides a new national benchmark for what homes should offer in a warming world.
Homes England makes the case plainly: “the design of new homes plays a crucial role in tackling a range of preventable health issues.” This reinforces a shift in policy thinking—from treating housing problems after they occur, to preventing them through better design. A Healthy Home is defined as one that “supports long-term physical and mental wellbeing, and enables people to live active and fulfilling lives.”
As a new national standard, the guidance requires that all new homes meet the M4(2) accessibility standard, deliver private outdoor space, achieve EPC A, and follow principles that enhance air quality, daylight, sound insulation, and thermal comfort. While these rules apply only to new-build homes, they expose the significant gap between the homes many people currently live in and the homes England now expects for future generations. In doing so, Healthy Homes provides a reference point for retrofit programmes, offering a model for what “good” should look like.
Organised across five themes—inclusivity, amenity, efficiency, comfort and control—the guidance moves English housing policy toward a more holistic view of wellbeing. It connects building design to physical and mental health, to equity and accessibility, and to the UK’s wider decarbonisation goals. For local authorities, developers, and providers, this marks more than a technical update: it signals a cultural shift towards homes that are not just places to live, but places that help people thrive.
In this sense, Healthy Homes is not just a design guide—it is a blueprint for redefining living in England, setting expectations for the homes we will build next and the healthier, fairer, low-carbon communities we need.
Challenges Ahead
However, real transformation requires confronting England’s existing housing stock, much of which predates modern standards and falls far short of Healthy Homes principles. For local authorities, the challenge lies in aligning limited budgets with the scale of need, prioritising the most vulnerable households, and navigating fragmented funding streams. Developers must balance retrofit costs, tenant disruption, and long-term maintenance while integrating new technologies into old structures. Researchers face the task of generating robust evidence on what works, developing scalable retrofit strategies, and understanding the lived experience of residents whose homes were never designed with health in mind.
Achieving Healthy Homes standards across existing homes will demand coordinated policy, innovation, and partnership—but it remains essential if England is to ensure healthy, safe, and climate-resilient housing for all.
Read the full Report here: