Agenda item

To consider the Obesity Task Group report and recommendations.  The report will be circulated following the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 3^rd March.

The Chair of the Tackling Obesity Task Group, Councillor Jane Potter, presented the group’s final report.  During delivery of this presentation the following points were highlighted for Members’ consideration:

·         A significant number of people living in Redditch, 65.9 per cent of the local population, were either overweight or obese.

·         The Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) and Redditch Borough Council had both identified health as a local priority.

·         Obesity was associated with a number of medical conditions including Type 2 Diabetes and coronary heart disease.

·         The group had found that there were a lot of projects and activities in the Borough that could help people to lose weight; however, there was limited awareness amongst people of these opportunities.

·         The key challenge identified by the group had been how to motivate people to lose weight.

·         The group had considered suggesting that a website be established to promote local initiatives; however, this idea had been rejected due to the resource implications.

·         Officers had suggested that social media could be used to promote local opportunities and that, if combined with the Time2Change campaign, this could be undertaken at limited cost to the Council.

·         Officers had also suggested this campaign should be underpinned by a Communications Plan.

·         The feedback received by the group from the Redditch and Bromsgrove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) indicated that there was limited awareness amongst medical practitioners of local opportunities for people to lose weight.

·         The group was envisaging that the monthly updates to GP Practices they were proposing would be sent to a designated contact and would not be lengthy.

·         Members of the group recognised that there were arguments both for and against the introduction of a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for hot food takeaways.  However, the group believed that the Council had a moral obligation to investigate this matter further.

·         The number of Councils with an SPD for hot food takeaways had increased in the past 10 years from none to over 20.

·         Participation in health chat training would provide Councillors with useful information about a range of health issues.

·         The group was not intending to propose that Councillors who had participated in the training should subsequently advise residents that they were overweight or obese.  Instead participants could use the information provided to signpost residents to useful sources of support.

·         The group had been impressed by the work that Redditch Borough Council was delivering to improve the health of staff.

Following presentation of the report the following matters were discussed by the Committee:

·         The potential for all partners to promote local opportunities to lose weight to the public.

·         The need for a multi-agency approach to be applied in order to tackle obesity levels effectively.

·         The resource implications involved in investigating the potential to introduce an SPD for hot food takeaways and whether such an investigation would represent value for money.

·         The difficulty of restricting the opening of hot food takeaways within a particular area around local schools and the challenge involved in imposing this restriction retrospectively.

·         The lack of a relevant policy in the Local Plan No. 4 to which an SPD for hot food takeaways could be linked.

·         The inclusion of a Health Impact Assessment in the preparatory work for the Local Plan No. 4.

·         The contribution of free swimming and local Sure Start Centres to improvements in the health of local residents.

·         The complex causes of obesity and the need for a variety of options to be available to people who were willing to lose weight.

·         The potential impact that obesity could have on a person’s self-confidence and mental health and the need for agencies to adopt a sensitive approach to supporting people in this position.

·         The potential workload involved in gathering information to provide monthly updates to GP Practices and the need for partners to actively contribute to this data gathering process.

·         The need for participation in health chat training by staff and Members to be undertaken on a voluntary basis.

·         The improvements in the health of local residents that had been achieved since the Comprehensive Area Assessment was published in 2010.

·         The impact that the behaviour of parents had on the health and life choices of their children.

·         The extent to which the group had been able to consult with local residents as part of the review.

RESOLVED that

1)        the Tackling Obesity Task Group’s report and recommendations be noted; and

2)        the Tackling Obesity Task Group be asked to consider presenting their findings for the consideration of relevant local partner organisations.