Local data collection on health & the built environment : Learning from Bristol’s Quality of Life Survey

The RECLAIM-funded project “The role of GBGI and targeted interventions in levelling up across Bristol” has combined data on GBGI with data from the Bristol City Council (BCC) Quality of Life (QoL) survey. The aim of this one-day workshop, held at the Arnolfini Centre in Bristol (13/06/24), was to discuss the value of local survey data for both academic and service work. It was attended by a wide range of Local Authorities (LAs) and other organisations such as the West of England Combined Authority and Forest of Avon Trust.

Venue for workshop the Arnolfini Centre, Bristol

The morning started with a summary of previous public health and planning research that has used the BCC QoL survey. This was followed by more in-depth presentations from BCC about the strategic importance of the QoL survey, the practicalities of running a LA-wide survey and the value of this data to the Public Health Team at BCC. We then presented the results of our RECLAIM-funded project, the take-home messages being that residents’ satisfaction with green space is a consistent predictor of outcomes such as life satisfaction and wellbeing, and that more attention should be paid to the quality of green/blue infrastructure in the urban environment, rather than simply the provision of such infrastructure.

Following a wet lunchtime walk to look at GBGI in central Bristol, there followed lively discussions in small groups about the potential for collecting or collating similar data in other LAs, and whether this could be scaled up to regional level. 

 We would like to thank the UKRI-funded RECLAIM Network Plus for supporting this workshop (grant EP/W034034/1).

By Issy Bray, Associate Professor in Public Health (Epidemiology), University of the West of England