BetterBritain Launches a National Movement to Put Public Health at the Heart of Britain’s Homes

A new national movement has launched with a bold ambition to improve public health by transforming the quality, safety and accountability of the environments people live in every day.

BetterBritain has officially launched as a public health-led movement bringing together tradespeople, educators, manufacturers, campaigners and households under one shared mission: creating healthier homes and stronger communities across Great Britain.

Chaired by Professor Michael Parrett and founded by Lisa Malyon, the movement has been created in response to growing concerns around poor housing conditions, fragmented industries, weak accountability and the increasing impact unhealthy homes are having on people's health and wellbeing.

Lisa Malyon, a mum of three from Surrey, bought a home that hospitalised her and her daughter because of multiple systemic failures. Lisa, the daughter of a builder and a nurse, has gathered leading experts across Great Britain to fix the broken system and protect public health. She comments:

"A simple defect such as a broken gutter or a lack of ventilation can quickly spiral into wide-ranging physical, neurological and psychological health impacts. Our own home's excess moisture, damp and mould was slowly killing us, and over five years of being heavily reliant on the NHS we were never asked about our living environment.

"Britain's economy is increasingly being weakened by preventable ill health linked to poor housing and unhealthy indoor environments, with rising NHS pressures, long-term sickness, reduced productivity, educational disruption and housing-related health inequalities carrying major economic consequences for households, employers and public services alike."

Unlike traditional trade organisations or directories, BetterBritain is a systems-change movement focused on rebuilding trust, collaboration and accountability across the built environment sector. As part of its national rollout, it will launch several interconnected initiatives designed to improve standards and reconnect industries around healthier outcomes:

• Better Britain Communities – free-to-access online communities where tradespeople can come together, ask questions and share advice.
• Better Britain Boot Camps – national training and competency programmes helping every trade understand the relationship between buildings and health.
• Better Britain Buddies – a mentoring and shadowing initiative pairing experienced professionals with newer entrants.
• Better Britain Services – a searchable directory of healthy-home-focused professionals, centred on competency and accountability.
• Better Britain ID – a national quality assurance system featuring scannable tradesperson ID cards, giving each home a digital service history record.
• Better Britain Accreditation – working with brands and manufacturers whose products contribute positively to healthier indoor environments.

Professor Michael Parrett comments on the launch:

"As a nation, we have been making avoidable mistakes in the way we build, maintain and retrofit our homes, and that often comes down to a lack of knowledge or, sadly in some cases, a lack of care and empathy for the people living inside them.

"Current building regulations were never fundamentally designed to deliver healthy homes. A home can technically comply with regulations while still contributing to damp, mould, overheating, poor ventilation, indoor air pollution and wider health impacts that affect millions of people across Great Britain.

"The requirement is for a new tier of building pathologists, aligning the built environment professions to work in the same way as the medical profession does – to do the best they can for public health."

BetterBritain's guiding principles include public health first, collaboration over competition, prevention rather than cure, better accountability, better consumer protection, removing silos between trades, and long-term outcomes over short-term fixes.

Lisa continues: "The existing online trade directories have very low entry requirements and tradespeople are rated by the consumer, who doesn't have a clue if the work has been carried out to a compliant standard. Our approach is to give households access to peer-reviewed, competent tradespeople who have their Better Britain ID scanned by the customer when they arrive, and all works are logged in the property's service report. The property and the people within are protected that way."