MARMOT CITY, NEWCASTLE Marmot City – An opportunity for local authority asset management for a fairer, healthier Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

Dan Martin	Ellie Howell
Leo Chadwick	Joe Higgins

Stuart Knight facilitated this article and worked closely with the 4 author students from the Master of Planning Course at Newcastle University. The students’ research endeavoured to find out and produce recommendations as to how commercial property owned by the council could be used to create healthier environments for communities.  Thanks Stuart for facilitating this insightful piece. Now see if you can persuade them to become surveyors. 

The Marmot City initiative in practice 

As part of our final year of the Master of Planning course at Newcastle University we were tasked with supporting the Public Health and Property teams within Newcastle City Council (NCC).  The brief was to discover potential ways that they can align their commercial property management with Newcastle’s strategic commitment to a ‘Marmot City’.  The Marmot Review, the foundation of the Marmot City initiative, takes a holistic approach and provides 8 evidence-based principles that should be applied to address health inequalities.  There are now more than 50 places across England, Wales and Scotland that have adopted the Marmot approach and are committed to becoming Marmot Places and embedding the following policy principles:

1. Give every child the best start in life

2. Enable all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and have control over their lives

3. Create fair employment and good work for all

4. Ensure a healthy standard of living for all

5. Create and develop healthy and sustainable place and communities

6. Strengthen the role and impact of ill health prevention

7. Tackle racism, discrimination and their outcomes

8. Pursue environmental sustainability and health equity together.

Through the research and analysis, we better understood that there is an important relationship between public health and commercial environments.  The Marmot Review (2010) highlighted the importance of the social determinants of health, which is backed up by the Public Health England ‘Healthy High Streets’ framework and the Place Standard Tool that recognise that the quality and accessibility of public places can have a prominent impact on health and wellbeing of individuals and the resilience of communities.

The research therefore endeavoured to find out and produce recommendations as to how commercial property owned by the council could be used to create healthier environments for communities.  The report delves into the idea that while NCC’s property portfolio is mainly dictated by supply and demand of the market, there is a vital link between a neighbourhood’s commercial mix and the wellbeing of residents.  The findings suggest that local authorities can play an active stewardship role in shaping the long-term function, resilience and social value of local centres through commercial property management.

The report used a place-based approach to provide a consultancy-level assessment of Newcastle’s commercial retail property assets.  The study bridges the gap between the Marmot recommendations and the practical reality of commercial property management.  Commercial tenancies are not solely physical infrastructures, but instead serve as spaces which provide assets like employment, social interaction and a provision of essential food infrastructure.  These are some of the social determinants of health that positively shape the daily lives and wellbeing of residents.

Project context

Our approach was to consider two contrasting local centres in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne as the focus for the assessment: Heaton Park Road in Heaton, and Welbeck Road in Walker.  These locations offer a clear comparison between a relatively stable, emerging district centre, and a neighbourhood centre experiencing more entrenched deprivation and physical neglect.

Heaton can be described as an ‘up-and-coming’ area characterised by a relatively high footfall and stronger commercial demand.  This is therefore mirrored in Heaton’s more favourable economic profile, while Walker is a slower economy, operating within a more challenging socio-economic context.  NCC’s Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) provides key information on health and economic statistics for all wards in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  The JSNA identifies Walker as one of the city's most deprived neighbourhoods, with almost three-quarters of households experiencing deprivation in at least one key domain of employment, education, health, disability or housing.  In contrast to this, Heaton JSNA data displays a considerably stronger socio-economic profile.  This is reflected in higher levels of self-reported health and stronger commercial activity.

This report conveys that ‘Healthy Placemaking’ is not a one-size-fits-all model and instead the design of healthy high streets should be actively curated to reflect the demographics of the residents that it serves.  While NCC does not own all the commercial assets within a locality, the management of properties where it does hold ownership should shift from a standardised property management approach towards a demographic-led strategy for its commercial assets to support the building blocks of health.

To enable structured quantitative comparison, a Social-Value Quality Index (SVQI) was developed and applied to both sites.  The SVQI assessed six categories:

1. Physical condition and accessibility

2. Economic vitality and employment

3. Social value and community use

4. Environmental sustainability and active travel

5. Equity and inclusion

6. Health and wellbeing impact.

The SVQI was designed and used as a diagnostic tool.  Its purpose was not to produce precise measurement, but to support structured discussion and comparison when interpreted alongside qualitative evidence.  It must be noted that this project did not use existing evidence-based tools, such as the Place Standard Tool, and should be viewed only as a starting point as to how a high street such as a local or district centre could be assessed in the future.  The SVQI was intended as an exploratory and site-specific framework, designed to support comparative discussion around the relationship between commercial environments, social value and health outcomes within local and district centres.

The scores produced from the SVQI were collectively agreed to reduce individual bias and were intended to be indicative rather than definitive.  The results were then presented using bar charts to highlight patterns of strength and weakness across each site.

SVQI Category Table

To complement the SVQI, semi-structured interviews were conducted with one tenant with a council tenancy in each area.  In Heaton, an interview was undertaken with the owner of 1b Books, a business which operates as both a commercial business and a community space.  In Walker, an interview was conducted with an employee of L and G Funeral Directors on St Anthony’s Road.  The interviews explored perceptions of footfall, safety, affordability, business sustainability, community role and barriers to improvement.

Findings

SVQI Comparison Chart

Heaton Park Road

Heaton Street Scene

1b Books Shopfront

The SVQI scores for Heaton Park Road reflect a moderately performing high street, which aligns with Heaton’s context within Newcastle’s economy.  The scores suggest that Heaton Park Road is a centre which benefits from baseline investment, consistent demand and reasonable environmental quality.  However, it still displays limitations which prevent it from delivering higher levels of social value.  These limitations are reflected in the lower scores for social infrastructure, equity and health-related indicators.

The score of 6 for physical condition reflects a well-maintained and functional street environment.  Shopfronts overall were presentable and attractive, although there were several businesses which weren’t open during the day or were boarded up, which detracted from the aesthetic.  The street also benefits from good public and active transport links.  However, the score of 4 for social value indicates a weakness in the street’s ability to act as a wider social anchor.  Although cafés and the bookshop provide informal spaces for interaction, there are no dedicated community facilities such as libraries or community halls.  The interactions along the street are incidental rather than intentional and are dependent on spending money.  However, one of Newcastle’s most prominent parks (Heaton Park) does have an entrance at the top of Heaton Park Road, which does provide a community asset for more deliberate social interaction. This is important to consider as part of the holistic role the council plays in place-making but was beyond the scope of this research project.

Ultimately, the SVQI paints Heaton Park Road as a functioning high street that benefits from its socio-economic context, but it falls short in social infrastructure, inclusion and health outcomes.  This uneven pattern is important because multiple, interacting determinants shape wellbeing, meaning that partial strengths may not translate into equitable outcomes without deliberate action.

Welbeck Road

Welbeck Road Retail Mix

Welbeck Corner

The SVQI scores for Welbeck Road indicate a low performing neighbourhood centre.  In contrast to Heaton Park Road, where the SVQI profile shows uneven performance and more targeted weaknesses, Welbeck Road displays consistently low outcomes across every category.  This suggests that the challenges are systemic rather than isolated weaknesses.

The score of 2 for physical condition and accessibility reflects a street environment that appears functional but tired, with worn and uneven pavements and areas where water pooled along the kerb line.  Several shopfronts were shuttered during daytime hours, which contributed to a sense of inactivity.  While the built fabric itself appears broadly stable, the public realm shows little evidence of recent investment.  The high street received a score of 3 for economic vitality and employment, which reflects the limited strength of the local commercial environment.  The observed mix was dominated by vape shops, betting shops and takeaways.  Footfall was relatively low at the time of observation.  The recognised underperformance seen from both the SVQI and the interview responses suggest that the street is under-trading and under-delivering social value.

Ultimately, the SVQI paints Welbeck Road as a neighbourhood centre experiencing systemic, structural underperformance rather than isolated weaknesses.  Unlike Heaton Park Road, where the challenges relate more to unrealised social value potential, Welbeck Road demonstrates the cumulative effects of existing within a more complex and deprived socio-economic context which would benefit from more long-term investment, to strengthen its commercial diversity and repair the environmental decline.  The site observations and interviews suggest that market-led management alone may be insufficient in reversing these trends without more active stewardship and intervention from the local authority.

Transferable lessons for local authority commercial property management

Overall, the report argues that commercial property management can operate as a practical lever for health equity when it is aligned with place-based public health objectives.  The contrasting evidence from Heaton and Walker shows that healthier local centres are not produced by market confidence alone.  They require active stewardship, clear priorities and interventions that treat everyday place quality as part of improving health outcomes and reducing health inequalities.

NCC’s existing social value commitment already recognises that procurement and asset management can contribute to wider social, economic and environmental outcomes, reflecting the principles of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012.  Within this context, the findings of the report suggest that commercial property assets should not be viewed solely through a rental income lens, but also as part of a wider place-based strategy for supporting healthier and more resilient communities. 

For Heaton Park Road, the emphasis is on incremental, social-value-led enhancement rather than intensive regeneration.  Recommendations focus on formalising support for socially productive tenancies, embedding social function into letting criteria, improving street management as a low-cost health intervention, and gradually diversifying health-supportive uses so that wellbeing provision is not reliant on a single service.

The results from Welbeck Road suggests that market-led management is unlikely to reverse decline.  A health-led stewardship approach is recommended, grounded in proportionate intervention.  In certain circumstances, proposed actions could include differential rent and supported lease models, treating basic public realm investment as preventative health infrastructure, actively rebalancing the commercial mix, and recognising and stabilising informal health anchor tenancies.

While local authorities must remain cognisant of statutory obligations relating to asset disposal and leasing, including considerations around best consideration and financial return under s123 of the Local Government Act 1972, the findings suggest there remains scope for councils to incorporate broader social value objectives into commercial property management and stewardship approaches.

Conclusion

The contrasting evidence from Heaton and Walker in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne demonstrates that the everyday management of commercial property assets has the potential to influence health outcomes, community resilience and neighbourhood vitality.  Healthier local centres are not produced by market confidence alone.  Instead, they require active stewardship and a strategic approach to the commercial mix and everyday place quality.

This research therefore highlights the potential for local authorities to use their commercial property portfolios not simply as financial assets, but as tools to support healthier and more resilient communities that experience fewer health inequalities.

This research project gives a starting point for how local authorities could begin to assess and create guidance to inform their approach to commercial tenancies. However, understanding the potential would require more robust and evidence-based comparison of similar high streets with and without social-value focused commercial assets management.