The London Healthy Urban Development Unit (HUDU) is a specialist NHS body in London that works at the intersection of health, planning and urban development. Its role is to help ensure that new developments and local plans take account of health and wellbeing from the earliest stages, so that growth in the capital supports healthier and more sustainable communities.
HUDU operates on behalf of the NHS and works with local authorities, the Greater London level, and national partners. Its core mission is practical rather than strategic: to provide specialist advice, tools and guidance that help planners and health professionals assess the likely impact of development on services and on population health. The unit’s work covers planning policy, health impact assessment, healthy urban planning checklists, and planning contributions linked to health service needs.
One of HUDU’s best-known products is the HUDU Planning Contributions Model, a licensed tool used mainly by NHS and local authority users to estimate the health service requirements and cost impacts of residential development, housing trajectories and population projections. HUDU also publishes a Healthy Urban Planning Checklist and a Rapid Health Impact Assessment tool, both designed to embed health considerations in local plans, masterplans and planning applications.
The unit’s approach was shaped in part by the 2012 Healthy Urban Planning Checklist, originally developed with the six London Olympic and Paralympic host boroughs, local NHS partners, the Greater London Authority and Groundwork London. That collaborative origin reflects HUDU’s wider function: supporting cross-sector decision-making in a dense and fast-changing city.
HUDU is based in London and serves a London-focused remit, with its tools and guidance used across the capital’s planning system.