Newcastle Council to Enforce Ban on New Hot Food Takeaway Joints

A man holds a burger purchased from a fast food outlet in Bristol, England on Jan. 7, 2013. Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Newcastle Council has tightened restrictions on where new takeaway joints can open in a bid to restrict “unhealthy lifestyles.”

In plans approved on Monday, the Labour-run Newcastle Council said that the policy will prevent new takeaways opening as obesity levels continue to rise.

Planners will no longer be able to grant permission to hot food takeaways that are within a 400m radius or 10-minute walk of schools, parks, and community centres.

This is to “tackle unhealthy lifestyles, by controlling the locations of hot food takeaways, with the aim to allow people to make healthier food and drink choices.”

Obese

This includes wards where more than 10 percent of Year 6 pupils are obese and where the number of approved hot food takeaways would be equal to, or exceed, the UK national average per 1,000 population.

The report said that rates of childhood overweight and obesity are higher than average in Newcastle at 29.1 percent, worse than the average for England (22.7 percent).

Newcastle is the 74th most deprived authority out of 317 in the country, but the council said that “this hides significant differences in deprivation across the city.”

It said that obesity rates are projected to increase, and are socially patterned, with children living in the most socio-economically deprived areas twice as likely to be overweight/obese than their peers in the least deprived areas.

A Newcastle Council spokesman pointed The Epoch Times to a statement by director of Public Health for Newcastle, Alice Wiseman, made earlier in the month.

“The environment we live in influences the food choices we make. Food served in hot food takeaways is generally higher in fat, salt, and sugar, and consequently, they can have a detrimental impact on residents’ health and the quality of the local environment.

“The council wants to support and encourage people to improve their health and wellbeing through healthy eating and active lifestyles.

“In order to do this, multiple interventions are required, including targeting the relationship between the food environment and the weight of the population.

“Planning has an important role in shaping healthy communities, and this is just one example of how it can help in the fight against obesity.”

The council said that it “recognised that hot food takeaways provide economic and employment opportunities, contribute towards the food offer and occupy commercial units which may have remained vacant, when compared to other retail uses” but they also “have a greater potential to have a detrimental impact on residential amenity and environmental quality and typically offer unhealthy food choices.”

Climate Change

Newcastle Council, which declared a “climate emergency” in April 2019, said it reviewed the fast food report and confirmed there were “no key considerations in respect of climate change.”

Councils are also increasingly implementing net zero ad bans.

In May, Edinburgh Council announced a net zero policy spearheaded by the Scottish Greens, which states that an advertisement or sponsorship proposal will not be approved if it promotes “high carbon products.”

This means a ban on adverts for airlines, airports, cars, cruise ships, and fossil fuel companies in the Scottish capital at council-owned spaces such as billboards and bus stops.

The council hopes that a ban on promoting “high carbon products” will prompt behavioural change from consumers.

The council stopped short of banning meat adverts, saying that this “would be highly controversial.”