Housing is a wider determinant of health and wellbeing, and ensuring the population has appropriate housing will prevent many problems well in advance of the need for clinical intervention (Marmot 2010). Affordable and suitable, warm, safe and secure homes are essential to a good quality of life yet many homes in Nottinghamshire do not meet these criteria. This has a negative impact on health and wellbeing, drives health inequalities and places an unnecessary burden on public resources.

This chapter discusses the main ways in which housing affects health and wellbeing in Nottinghamshire, describing the impact of: 

• Poor housing conditions, particularly the impact of falls in the home, cold and damp homes and fuel poverty, fire in the home and inadequate home security
• Insufficient suitable housing, including the impact of overcrowding and lack of housing that enables people eg, older or disabled people, to live independently
• Homelessness on families, and other crisis that may result in the loss of a home and an individual’s ability to live independently

An analysis of the impact of these issues concludes that some households are disproportionately affected by one or more of these factors, particularly older people and children, low income households (particularly those living in poverty), physically disabled households, and households living in rural areas.

There are a number of other housing related issues that impact on health that have not been covered in depth in this chapter; the selected topics were identified as the priority through consultation in the county. Other matters to explore in the future include noise, accidents in the home, and spatial planning.