Birmingham City Council seek a researcher for a Healthy Streets study

Birmingham City Council’s Built & Natural Environment team — part of the Public Health division — is seeking to appoint a team to complete an ethnographic study to explore barriers to walking, cycling and public transport to support the adoption of the Healthy Streets Approach.

In capturing lived experiences, the study will seek to reach Birmingham’s diverse communities through interviews, shared journeys and observational research.

The results will identify the social, environmental and economic impacts of transport-related inequalities as part of the wider Healthy Streets: Public Health Car Dependency Study.

In 2025, Birmingham City Council adopted its Road Harm Reduction Strategy based on consultation findings that residents were concerned about dangerous driving and inconsiderate, illegal and dangerous parking.

The consultation builds upon and updates the 2016 Road Safety Strategy, which failed to tackle traffic volume. The new study seeks to determine why residents are so car-dependent in Birmingham.

According to council documents, each year Birmingham’s roads cause approximately 22 deaths and 400 serious injuries in road traffic collisions.

The Healthy Streets Approach was adopted by Birmingham in 2025. Healthy Streets is a framework for proactively tackling road safety that embeds public health into transport, public realm and planning. It was first developed by Lucy Saunders for the Greater London Authority in 2014, officially adopted by London in 2016, and has seen wider adoption across the country since 2020.