HEALTH bosses have been debating the best ways of turning round the district’s high obesity rates.

Public health campaigns, new cycle lanes and planning measures such as restricting the opening of take-aways were among moves discussed by the Bradford and Airedale health and wellbeing board yesterday.

The committee decided to draw up a new obesity action plan for the district in the coming months.

The meeting heard Bradford Council’s public health team spent around £2 million on anti-obesity campaigns and initiatives each year, with the NHS funding more extreme measures such as bariatric surgery.

It heard the council’s planning team had recently started a ban on take-aways opening near schools.

One member of the committee, Conservative group leader Councillor Simon Cooke, said there was “no evidence at all” to support the restriction on take-aways.

He called for budgets to be concentrated on treating obese people, rather than the general population, saying this could deliver better results.

Bur Dr Andy Withers, chairman of Bradford Districts Clinical Commissioning Group, said he “fundamentally disagreed” with this.

He said: “I think the whole thrust of this needs to be on stopping people getting there in the first place.”

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, leader of Bradford Council and chairman of the committee, also backed a ‘prevention rather than cure’ approach.

She called for the bulk of the money to be spent on preventing children from becoming obese, rather than trying to change the habits of adults.

She said: “It is important to get this right now, because they are also going to grow up.”

Javed Khan, of Healthwatch Bradford and District, also raised concerns about the number of dessert parlours which had opened across the district in recent years.

The meeting heard around one in eight of Bradford’s adult population were registered as obese at their GP surgery, leaving them more at risk of a range of health problems from cancer to reproductive issues.

Around one in 12 of the district’s reception-age children are obese.

This rises to around one in five children in year six (age 10 to 11) - considerably higher than the national average.

There was a strong correlation between poverty and being overweight, the meeting heard.

There were also higher obesity rates among Asian or Asian British pupils, with more than a quarter of these year six pupils classed as obese, a report before the committee said.

The wards with the highest proportion of obese children were Little Horton, Keighley Central and Manningham, where more than a quarter of all year six pupils were obese.

Cllr Cooke asked whether public health teams needed to do more focused work with Asian families.

He also said far more work needed to be done getting key messages across to working-class families, saying the anti-smoking campaigns of recent years had been “great at telling middle-class people like me” to quit but had failed the working classes.