Responding to a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on
Obesity, Cllr Izzi Seccombe, Chairman of the Local Government
Association’s Community Wellbeing Board, said:
“Obesity is considered to be one of the most serious public
health challenges of the 21st century. It is
having an impact on people’s lives now, across the generations,
in terms of our quality of life, our risk of developing chronic
diseases such as type 2 diabetes and its association with common
mental health disorders. Doing nothing is not an option.
“Today's obese children will be tomorrow's obese adults, and with
this comes a range of costly and debilitating major health
conditions that could bankrupt adult social care and NHS
services.
“Successfully tackling obesity involves both individuals taking
responsibility for their own decisions and government supporting
them to do so.
“Without action, the health of individuals will continue to
suffer, health inequalities associated with obesity will remain
and the economic and social costs will increase to unsustainable
levels.
“Obesity is a complex problem with a large number of different
but often interlinked causes. No single measure is likely to be
effective on its own in tackling obesity.
“Cuts to the public health grant undermine councils’ ability to
tackle childhood obesity, which is why we continue to call on the
Government to reverse these reductions and return funding that
was cut since April 2015.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The public health grant to councils has
been cut by £531 million (nearly 10 per cent of the total budget)
from 2015/16 to 2019/20.
2. Last year almost 1.2 million children
(Reception and Year 6 combined) were weighed and measured by
their local authority – the highest since the programme was first
established more than 10 years ago.
- 3. Since the responsibility of
delivering public health transferred to councils in 2013, local
councils have spent more than £1 billion tackling child and adult
obesity, and physical inactivity. Despite reductions to the
public health budget, councils report a 50 per cent increase in
spend on childhood obesity, and a 60 per cent increase for
childhood physical inactivity over the last five years.
