Council set to tackle growing issue of overweight children

THE number of children who are obese and overweight is continuing to more than double between the years of reception and Year 6, council reports reveal.

In Hounslow, the percentage of children recorded as overweight in Year 6 remained at just under 40% from 2013/14 to 2016/17. This is compared to a figure of around 21% of reception children.

The percentage of children recorded as obese in Year 6 remained at just under 24.3% between 2013 and 2017. In Reception it was 10.3%.

Hounslow Council says it is working on a series of measures to try to tackle the problem.

Last month, figures from the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed that 23.6% of Year 6 children in London are obese and 10.3% in reception.

In Ealing, data for 2017 shows children have worse than the UK average levels of obesity with 10.6% of reception children aged 4 to 5 and 23.9% of Year 6 children classified as obese.

In Hillingdon in 2017, 9.3% of children in reception - similar to the England average – and 23.2% of children in Year 6 – worse than England’s average – were obese.

All the boroughs are running a series of programmes to try to tackle the problem.

In Hillingdon, these include encouraging people to follow the UNICEF accredited community breastfeeding promotion, launching new healthy eating and physical activity education programmes, launching a new child weight management programme and an active travel programme.

As well as making promises to deal with childhood obesity himself in his recent draft London Food Strategy, London mayor Sadiq Khan made recommendations to public bodies, such as schools and the NHS, to help fight obesity levels.

The document said that local authorities should help schools to adopt policies such as food and health education and that Public Health England should work with the Child Obesity Taskforce to help businesses promote healthy food options.

The Child Obesity Taskforce will be launched later this year and will be made up of a group of 12 people, chaired by Mr Khan, who will work to reduce childhood obesity in London.

If your child is very overweight, the NHS recommends what you can do to help them become a healthy weight as they grow.

Your GP or practice nurse can give you further advice.

They also may be able to refer you to a local weight management programme for children.