Agenda item

Council Motions

Minutes:

The Sub-Committee gave consideration to two motions that had been considered by Council on 28th March 2018.

 

Youth Council Motion

 

This concerned vaping and the use of e-cigarettes. The Youth Council had concerns that vaping was becoming an attractive activity for young people. They believed this was in large part due to the advertising and promotion of e-cigarettes and vaping that they believed targeted young people.

 

The Youth Council felt more needed to be done to prevent vaping from being seen as fun, acceptable and a ‘cool’ thing to do and wished to see the same controls on vaping as there were on tobacco products. They would like to see advertising banned, plain packaging controls in place and point of sale restrictions. They believed these restrictions on the promotion of vaping would further reduce the likelihood of people taking up vaping and in turn smoking.

 

The Chief Executive was requested to write to the minister of Health and to ask for these restrictions to be put in place for vaping products.

 

Motion of Opposition Business

 

A motion was moved in relation to the issue of childhood obesity and the contributory factor of the easy availability to children of unhealthy takeaway food.

 

Some local authorities had adopted Supplementary Planning Document and Local Plans that include a prohibition on new fast food takeaways within 400 meters of local schools (a buffer zone) and the Council was asked to request

the Planning Sub-Committee to:-

 

investigate the desirability and practicality of:

·          Introducing a prohibition on new takeaways within a 400 metre buffer

zone as part of the Local Plan; Council shall also contact all schools

within the Borough to seek reassurances they:

·          Enforce a ‘stay-on-site’ policy at lunchtimes;

·                     Ban the delivery of takeaways to the school gates for collection by

pupils; And ask them to do so; if they do not.”

 

The Council had referred the motion to the Overview and Scrutiny Board and the Sub-Committee gave consideration to the draft response. The Sub-Committee noted that information was being gathered from a wide range of sources and discussions were underway to consider a workshop on tackling overweight and obesity issues as part of the Health Scrutiny work programme. Consideration of the desirability and practicality of restricting new takeaways could form part of the agenda for such a workshop.

 

The Sub-Committee were informed that most Oldham schools had a “stay on site policy” during breaks/ lunch times for safeguarding reasons, and many offered a varied healthy option menu for snack and meal choices. The Education Catering Service provided high quality, high nutritional healthy options to 78 primary schools, which had been recognised nationally (Gold Food for Life Catering Mark and the prestigious Best OF Organic Market – BOOM award), and served circa 13000 meals per day.

 

Most schools did not allow the delivery of takeaways to the school gates, and this would be confirmed at the next primary and secondary head teacher meetings. All schools would be asked to implement a ban if one was not already in place.

 

RESOLVED that:-

1.    The content of the Youth Council motion and the Council’s resolution be noted.

2.    The content of the Opposition motion and the draft response to the Overview and Scrutiny Board be noted.

3.    Consideration would be given to the possibility of incorporating the issue of obesity into the proposed workshop in relation to the report on Urgent Care at Item 14 of this agenda.

 

 

Supporting documents: