Senior Portsmouth teacher says lack of space contributes to high rate of child obesity in city

Mrs Peckham said: ‘I’m not shocked by these findings but I do think it’s a societal problem – children are not as active as they once were and many spend too much time in front of television screens and on video games.’

Mrs Peckham thinks the situation in Portsmouth, the second most densely populated city after London, is compounded by a lack of space.

‘Many of our children live in high-rise flats or houses without gardens,’ she said. ‘Where we are situated there’s no local park or space for children to safely run around. I’ve always wished we had more open areas for our children to be active.’

The school leadership team believes a lack of parental awareness over ‘hidden sugars’ has contributed to the problem. It was a concern which led to the introduction of a packed lunch policy and a sugar pact agreement with the local shop not to sell sweets to children before school.

‘We have an agreement with parents that children can only have either a packet of crisps or chocolate bar as part of their lunch. A big problem is a lack of awareness over the sugar content of different products such as food sauces. We did an activity with parents and they were amazed by the sugar levels,’ said Mrs Peckham.

To tackle the issue the school have introduced parents to a supermarket sugar app which scans bar codes and provides an image of how much sugar is in that product.