Southampton: Unhealthy advertising could be banned on council land
The city council earns money through the rent of advertising spaces
Last updated 13th Mar 2023
Calls are being made for Southampton City Council to ban the advertising of unhealthy products on council-owned land.
The council offers advertising space, like the canopy on the entrance to the Itchen Bridge and roundabouts across the city – and earns money through the rent.
On the council site it says: “Southampton City Council offers highly effective and competitively priced outdoor, digital and print advertising opportunities that can help you reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers across the city.
“We can offer businesses of all sizes the opportunity to get their product, service or event, in front of their target audience.”
The council already has a stand on what adverts it will and will not accept.
On another part of the advertising section of the council site, it states:
“Southampton City Council reserves the right to remove or refuse to promote any individual advertisement, which, in the opinion of the council, is considered inappropriate, may be deemed to bring the council or its aims, objectives or priorities into disrepute or which promote values contrary to those of the council.”
Some products and services listed under the ‘may not be advertised’ part of the guidance page are (sale or consumption of) alcohol and tobacco, ‘adult’ industries and gambling.
‘Or other products deemed significantly harmful to health and/or communities’.
Now, several councillors want the council to go one step further – and ban all advertising that contradicts its vision of a healthy city – namely – unhealthy food.
Councillor Professor Barrie Margetts is one of these councillors. He will be posing the question to full council on Wednesday (March 15).
He said: “When the council is trying to promote healthy diets and address childhood obesity, it makes little sense to use council-controlled advertising space to promote unhealthy foods that are going against the aims of the council’s health policy.
“Marketing of unhealthy foods is only one part of the problem leading to poor diets, but it is an avenue the council can control, and it should do so.
“The council does not have a lot of levers to address the wider food environment, but restricting marketing is one mechanism that they can and should control.
“I believe that the loss in revenue can be made up by finding other more acceptable advertisers. Even better, the council uses these marketing spaces to promote healthy diets as part of their health promotion campaign. Ideally this would be alongside restrictions in access to unhealthy foods around schools.”