Wellbeing refocuses the agenda from growth to stuff that really matters to people’s lives

No place has yet fully implemented a wellbeing economy, but many localities are assembling the building blocks. Wales has put wellbeing into law with its Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. Scotland has created a National Performance Framework, driving wellbeing as a duty on public bodies. Scotland also provides the secretariat for the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGO), a collaboration of national governments sharing expertise and policies since its launch in 2018. Member nations of WEGO include Scotland, Wales, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand. 

 

Other local and regional authorities are undertaking inclusive growth and community wealth-building approaches; and neighbourhoods are working with doughnut economics, which sets out sustainable development goals as social foundations for humanity.

 

Wellbeing-economy approaches involve citizens more deeply, develop cooperative or social enterprise businesses and change local processes. 

 

“It’s like building Lego,” says Trebeck. “You assemble all the component parts until it all comes together.”

 

At the heart of the wellbeing economy is partnership, recognising the interconnectedness of social, economic and environmental problems and focusing local energy and effort on the same set of outcomes. 

 

 

In Essex, for example, councils, the NHS and voluntary sectors are working together on a health-in-everything approach, underpinned by the understanding that people’s housing and income have direct impacts on their health. Respiratory illnesses, for example, are exacerbated by poor housing and poverty.

 

“People in deprived areas are more likely to die of respiratory illnesses even if they are optimally managed by their GP,” says Essex County Council head of wellbeing and public health Adrian Coggins. “We need to make sure that district councils as housing authorities are prioritising these people for retrofit, addressing mould and damp, and that people are receiving the right benefits.”

 

 

Wellbeing-economy approaches also rebuild agency in communities, inviting citizens to decide what a good life means to them, and involving them in decision-making processes around new developments and the future of their places. 

 

While many local authorities are still working at the level of tick-box consultations, Camden Council in north London has been embedding citizen-focused work and taking a wellbeing-economy approach since 2012. A Good Life Camden Framework was created with local citizens with participation embedded at every level, from involvement in decision-making through citizens assemblies to funding for local ideas. 

 

Camden was the first council in the UK to offer imagination activist training to its staff to support them to think more expansively and work more deeply within communities.

 

Introducing the Camden Imagines programme, Camden Council’s then leader Georgia Gould – now a Labour MP – said: “We need to stop putting sticking plasters over broken systems and instead reimagine something better, together from the ground up.”

 

 

Deep organisational change is needed within councils and all organisations that create or maintain places, to help them to work as partners and enablers alongside citizens and communities. Staff need to be supported to step out of their fixed and focused roles, instead making time for relationships and creating the conditions to have “what if?” conversations that build agency and creativity. 

 

Profit has dominated the housing development market, but investors are now also prioritising wellbeing-economy principles and pursuing alternative models of community-led development.

 

 

The Crown Estate includes among its assets the world’s oldest oak tree, London’s Regent Street and most of the UK seabed. It has managed the monarch’s estate since the 1700s, becoming a commercial organisation in the 1960s and today manages £16 billion worth of land and property. 

 

As a long-term steward, in recent years it has been on a journey to extend its sense of value beyond financial metrics towards leadership in nature recovery, in progress towards net zero, and in the creation of more inclusive communities. 

 

“We try to do things the market might not do,” says The Crown Estate’s head of strategic land, Rob Chesworth. “Housing is a fundamental lever to good growth and crucial to removing local and regional inequalities. The housing sector desperately needs innovation around engineering, procurement, supply chain, materials and the circular economy.”

 

Earlier this year The Crown Estate announced three housing demonstrator projects, in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cheshire. Each has ambitious targets around carbon reduction, aligned to the 1.5°C goal. These include testing regenerative development principles such as deconstructable homes for future reuse, as well as low-carbon infrastructure delivery. 

 

The demonstration projects will also test deeper engagement with local communities. “We’ve owned this land since 1931,” says Chesworth. “We want to better understand people’s lives and use this landmark scheme to think about place over the next 100 years.”

 

 

 

In Hertfordshire, The Crown Estate is working with developer TOWN to involve the community in the development of 80 homes at Westwick Row, East Hemel, including exploring how more collaborative forms of housing and shared community-run spaces can be part of the development mix. 

 

In Somerset, another test case will soon begin delivery. Mayday Saxonvale in Frome is the UK’s first community-led development at masterplan scale and a test case in the prioritisation of local social and economic value over financial return. 

 

The 5-hectare brownfield site in Frome town centre was packaged up by Mendip District Council in 2018 (folded into Somerset Council in 2023) which then formed an agreement with Acorn Group to develop the site. However, a large local movement opposed the plans. Mayday Saxonvale, a social enterprise, was set up to create and deliver an alternative proposal for the site, working with development partner Stories, which undertakes projects with social and environmental ambitions. 

 

“Putting land on the market for the highest price will not get the best outcomes,” says Stories co-founder and head of land and partnerships Paul Clark.

 

Mayday Saxonvale’s plan was co-designed with the local community for the long-term benefit of the town. It will deliver a range of community spaces including 11,000 sq m of employment space, 263 energy-efficient homes (of which at least 20 per cent will be affordable) and community-owned assets, among them a riverside lido, hotel and workshop space. 

 

It will take a retrofit-first approach, preserving and renovating heritage buildings. Housing will be delivered through a partnership with the Frome Area Community Land Trust. The housing, employment and leisure assets and a new public realm will be owned by the community in perpetuity. 

 

The scheme is focused on sustainability and the sourcing of local materials and it will open up local waterways and develop connective green infrastructure. 

 

 

Most significantly, it will design for wellbeing and maximise social value, with any profits that are generated fed back into the town. 

 

The Mayday Saxonvale approach reduces the reliance on external capital – and thus development profit – through a phased draw-down of the land at Saxonvale from the council, the creation of a community bond and careful management of commercial spaces. 

 

After a long and protracted process, Mayday Saxonvale’s scheme finally won approval in January 2025.

 

Both Mayday Saxonvale and the demonstrator projects undertaken by The Crown Estate come under the broad umbrella of wellbeing-economy approaches. By its nature, taking the wellbeing approach to the economy is iterative, experimental and shaking up the ways in which we plan for and develop places. 

 

Clare Goff is a journalist specialising in writing about place, including local economic alternatives, local government, housing and community power. She is currently working on a place-based systems change project in Cardiff