Planning for better health: new rules to limit fast-food outlets near schools

There was some good news before Christmas for anti-obesity campaigners and all those who care about improving the diet of children and young people. The Government announced that it will from now on be harder to open new fast-food outlets, especially in close proximity to schools or places where young people gather.

Planning policy tightened

The newly revised version of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which came into use in December states that:

Local planning authorities should refuse applications for hot food takeaways and fast food outlets:

a) within walking distance of schools and other places where children and young people congregate, unless the location is within a designated town centre; or

b) in locations where there is evidence that a concentration of such uses is having an adverse impact on local health, pollution or anti-social-behaviour.

The NPPF is a key planning document which sets out the overarching principles of national planning policy. All local authorities are obliged to abide by these principles in developing their own local planning policies and deciding planning applications.

Fast food, obesity and cancer

We know that fast foods tend to be high in calories, saturated fats and salt, and higher consumption of them raises the risk of obesity. And we know that obesity is a major driver of cancer in the UK, being a causal factor in up to 13 different types of cancer, including cancers of the breast and bowel (two of the most common types of cancer), and pancreatic and oesophageal cancer (some of the hardest to treat).

As such, though the relationship between diet and cancer is complex, we could make very significant in-roads into reducing preventable cancer by improving our diet. To achieve this, CancerWatch believes that we need to seek structural changes in our economy and society which will make cancer-causing products and choices less prevalent and healthier choices much more prevalent.

Enabling and encouraging children and young people from all backgrounds to take on healthier dietary habits from a young age is central to our ability to do this. As campaigners have pointed out, fast food outlets are disproportionately clustered in the most deprived neighbourhoods and this concentration may have been growing in recent years.

This change in planning policy is exactly the kind of structural change we need to see to improve the nation’s diet and seriously cut back the number of preventable cancers.

Building on success

The new policy is also a real victory for food campaigners from a wider range of organisations, including Obesity Health Alliance, of which CancerWatch is a member, Sustain, and Food Active who have rightly celebrated this victory. Now we need to build on these successes and continue to campaign for a better food environment for children and young people. We could begin by reducing the proportion of ultra-processed foods in school meals, as set out in CancerWatch’s 2024 Cancer Prevention Manifesto.