Building Healthy Homes, Building Healthy Futures: Inside Plymouth’s Living Lab

A Partnership That’s Here to Stay

For Rachael and her team, recent news has been a huge vote of confidence: “We’ve had agreement from both boards to continue the Health and Housing Partnership for another three years, which is great. Given the tough financial climate the NHS finds itself in, I think we’re really lucky.”

But this is no time to rest on laurels. “There’s a real shift for PCH to focus on partnerships, building on what we’ve done with Livewell. It’s about building capacity to draw in funding and support delivery of initiatives. Where we can demonstrate wider impact, we hope to make a business cases to both boards. It’s really exciting to be planning the next phase of the partnership - two years of building up to this moment.”

From Learning to Leading

The Plymouth Living Lab began as a period of learning and discovery, bringing together academia, health and housing to find new ways of working. Now, as Rachael puts it, “We move into this next phase. We’ve done this period of learning - how do we bring these organisations together? Now we need to think: how do we really want to capture the impact and the metrics going forward? Have we got the right evaluation framework?”

This focus on robust evaluation isn’t just for internal purposes. “All of that’s learning for housing associations, isn’t it?” Rachael says. “The Living Lab’s doing really well. We’re currently in discussions with The Lister Alliance (Cisco) at the moment about how we can continue that relationship. There’s a real desire for the Lister Alliance, which funds it, to continue supporting the Living Lab.”

Co-Design at the Core

A hallmark of the Living Lab is its commitment to co-design with residents. “We’ve run fantastic co-design sessions. We had about 105 residents come along to different sessions. These were a real success - Cisco and other partners have joined us, and residents have really guided the process, sharing what is important to them and what they want from technologies that support health.”

One standout project has been a digital platform to reduce loneliness, originally piloted in Barcelona and now being shaped by Plymouth residents. “It was an opportunity for residents to come together with local organisations to help design a really local offer. What kind of activities would they want? What concerns would they have? What would excite them? We’ve got organisations like our local museum, befriending services, cookery workshop providers and others organising digital activities to be offered on the platform, and the falls prevention team offering group gentle exercise sessions. There was a real interest to have coastal walks and we’re exploring these being done virtually with fancy headsets!”

Residents have also helped shape the rollout of a pilot for home sensors that monitor movement in the home, thinking through scenarios and how technology should alert people and trigger interventions from services. “We’re just working through that now, and I’m hopeful in the next two weeks the technology will be in the hands of our residents.”

Expanding the Impact: From Youth Homelessness to Digital Inclusion

The Health and Housing Partnership isn’t just about older adults or digital health technology - it’s tackling some of Plymouth’s toughest challenges, like youth homelessness. “We’ve developed a supported route for young people in the homelessness system to come into PCH. We provide support before, during, and throughout their starter tenancy. Three of the young people we’ve housed had been in B&Bs for over a year. Now, they’re being supported to succeed.”

This pilot is backed by research and using journey mapping to demonstrate both personal and system benefits. “If we can embed this as our default position, giving young people the best chance of success, that’s great.”

Digital Inclusion is another area of focus. “We’ve supported over 300 residents with access to devices, data, and digital support. We’ve now worked with wider partners and pitched for citywide funding to take this approach beyond just PCH residents - because we’re mindful we don’t want to make inequalities worse. Now we’ve tested it and proved the need, how can we build on this approach and develop a coordinated approach to digital inclusion across the city?”

Empowering Communities

PCH’s Community Wellbeing Champion Programme, developed in partnership with Livewell’s Wellbeing Team is also going from strength to strength. “It’s all about empowering communities to support one another. We’ve trained about 50 residents now with a qualification. It’s delivered jointly by ourselves and Livewell, and it’s about sharing knowledge, equipping people to have conversations around support, and building community resilience.”

The results speak for themselves: “The feedback has been really positive from everyone and creates a supportive network of members, making sure we can continue to support them and they can share helpful knowledge and resources with each other.

Looking Forward

With new funding secured, an evaluation framework in place, and residents at the heart of every step, the partnership and the Living Lab are models for what’s possible when housing and health truly work together. “We are viewed as an anchor organisation in Plymouth, and that’s been one of our advantages. But there’s so much more we can do - scaling up, connecting with others, and sharing what we’ve learned.”

Rachael’s message is clear: “We haven’t got it all figured out, but we want to build on and embed what we have achieved - everyone in Plymouth can play a part in making our city a place where health and wellbeing thrive.”

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