15-05-2025
The seaside spot crowned Britain's most obese town
Obesity. An epidemic. A modern scourge. A complex, painful subject wrapped in layers of shame, judgment and defensiveness. So how does it feel to live in Hartlepool, the town with the highest proportion of adults and children who are so overweight their health is at risk?
'Everybody round here is fat and getting fatter, and I feel really, really sad about it,' says John Betey, a moustached 64-year-old, leaning on the mobility scooter he needs to get around Hartlepool town centre. 'I'm embarrassed that I'm 19st – but I don't want to be. I got made redundant 12 years ago from my job as a machine operator, but now I'm too overweight to get a new job.'
This seaside town in County Durham carries the unenviable crown of Britain's most obese town. Numbers crunched by The Telegraph show that the combined obesity figures for adults and children is 33.5 per cent of the population. In England as a whole it is 23.8 per cent.
Obesity, of course, is at the extreme end of the scale. Across England as a whole, 64.5 per cent of the adult population is overweight and/or obese. In Hartlepool the damning figure is 77.2 per cent.
But sobering statistics only tell part of the story; they don't reflect the lives blighted, the life chances curtailed, the increased risk of multiple diseases including coronary heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, asthma and cancer.
Dig a little deeper elsewhere into statistics from the Department of Heath and Social Care and the data becomes even more troubling: 27.9 per cent of reception pupils in Hartlepool are classed as overweight, according to the latest available statistics from 2023/24, with 13.9 per cent obese. In England as a whole, 22.1 per cent are overweight and 9.6 per cent are classed as obese.
By year six, more than a quarter (26.7 per cent) of 10 and 11-year-olds in Hartlepool are living with obesity; above the national average of 22.1 per cent for that age group.
I freely admit that before I visit Hartlepool I am full of trepidation. How to even begin a conversation about such an emotive issue with strangers in the street? Is there any way to avoid causing offence? Astonishingly, everyone is more than happy to talk – and what they have to say is deeply depressing.
Take Betey, a father-of-four with seven grandchildren, who suffers from arthritis and had a pacemaker fitted earlier this year. He doesn't know for sure if his health problems are related to his size, but it seems highly likely. According to the Arthritis Foundation, every pound of extra weight adds 4lb of force on a person's joints. Moreover, fat is chemically active and releases inflammation-causing proteins.
'I can walk but not very far, which is why I need the scooter. And I can't go up the stairs at home, so I have to get help from my son. It's not a good feeling but if I have the money I'll order a Chinese – chicken curry, chips and fried rice – two nights a week,' he says with a shrug.
'Then I come out into town and when I look around me I feel the people of Hartlepool could do so much better, I could do so much better – but we need help.'
His views are echoed by Carol Bickerdyke, 70, out walking her poodle, Archie, with her husband, Desmond. They moved here after a lifetime working in Portugal, because property was cheap. She's a fan of the town, with its unexpectedly grand – if largely neglected and run-down – Victorian architecture, but is unsurprised that Hartlepool is an obesity black spot.
Time and again, statistics show that the North East and the Midlands have the highest numbers of people living with obesity, which is linked to social deprivation, stress, highly processed junk food and a lack of exercise.
'My daughter is 43 and she is always on a diet because she's quite big,' confides Bickerdyke.
'The problem is the availability of cheap fast food. If you have two or three kids to feed and not much money, it's cheaper to buy a frozen ready-made lasagne or frozen chips and fish fingers than to serve up a healthy meal every day. These are processed foods full of salt and fat and sugar, but people have no idea – there needs to be greater education.'
Far beyond Hartlepool, the UK at large is in crisis, with higher rates of obesity than other G7 nations such as Germany, France, Italy and Japan. Internationally, it languishes below Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Armenia. Junk food advertising, the prevalence of takeaways and the volume of inexpensive processed foods available in supermarkets have all been blamed for fuelling the crisis, along with sedentary, screen-based lifestyles.
'Despite countless policy initiatives aimed at improving the situation, obesity levels among children in England remain at harmfully elevated levels,' says Dr Liz Fisher, a senior fellow and the children and young person lead at the Nuffield Trust. 'Obese children today are developing health problems that once only affected adults, including Type 2 diabetes.
'Local areas with more childhood poverty, lower breastfeeding rates and poor access to green spaces have higher child obesity levels. Much of the evidence informing obesity policy to date has focused on the choices of individuals, but to get a grip on this issue, approaches with more emphasis on wider social and economic factors are desperately needed, at both a national and local level.'
The annual cost to the NHS of treating obesity-related ill health is estimated at £6.5 billion by the Department of Health and Social Care. Meanwhile, the cost to the wider economy is £100 billion a year, according to a 2024 report from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), with those who are obese but still work less mobile, less productive and more likely to take time off due to ill health.
'Poor public health is holding back the UK economy, and obesity is playing a significant role. The poorest regions across England are feeling this epidemic the worst,' Jamie O'Halloran, a senior research fellow at the think tank, said last year.
The IPPR clearly pinpointed those very regions; four out of five of the parliamentary constituencies with the highest levels of obesity and economic inactivity were in the North.
But what is the solution? For those of us reared on the mantra of 'five a day', it seems unbelievable that entire generations remain ignorant about the importance of fruit and vegetables and of how to cook nutritious meals from scratch.
The demise of both decent school dinners and domestic science as a subject has had an impact – and no matter how hard Jamie Oliver tries to convey the speed and ease of cooking on a budget in Channel 4 shows such as £1 Wonders, that message seemingly still has not spread to communities across Britain in general and Hartlepool in particular. Or if it has, local people are none the less still making poor food choices.
'People judge you as lazy and stupid and lacking in self-control,' says a 27-year-old mother-of-two who declined to be named. 'I just can't lose the baby weight, and being treated as a second-class citizen is really hurtful – so then you find yourself comfort eating.
'I can buy a multipack of crisps for £1, but an apple costs the best part of 50p, which seems crazy. It's a vicious circle. There's no point just telling a fat person they're fat; what we really need is help to break that cycle as well as access to better food that's affordable.'
Is she aware that adults who become overweight before 30 are almost doubling their risk of an early death? That's the grim conclusion from this month's European Congress on Obesity, held in Malaga. And if she were – would it alter anything?
'The perception persists that 'these people did it themselves and they should live with the consequences',' says Prof Paul Gately, who specialises in exercise and obesity at Leeds Beckett University and is the chief executive of Obesity UK.
'But obesity is incredibly complex and the solution isn't just exercising more and eating less – if it was that simple we wouldn't have a global health problem. Politicians try to tackle it, but their efforts, however well-intended, are far too piecemeal. Between six and 18 months later they see their strategy isn't working as intended, so they back off.'
There have been more than 700 policies aimed at tackling obesity introduced in the past 30 years and yet the problem is getting bigger every year. The rising number of children now affected has ratcheted up a sense of urgency among medical experts, yet successive governments have failed to grasp the nettle and pump proper investment into early prevention and treatment. Just what will it take to tip the scales?
'We don't just need one good idea. We need hundreds of them all connected, all moving things in the same direction,' says Prof Gately. 'There's rightly a conversation now around weight-loss jabs, but the NHS is already on its knees and can't afford it. Britain needs cross-party agreement, a department dedicated to tackling obesity and a 15-year plan that is fully funded.'
As I walk past Kwicksnax café, Cash Generator and Betfred, the one word repeated to me again and again is 'help'. The people of Hartlepool want help.
On the walkway from Middleton Grange shopping mall, I meet young chefs Luke Peterson, 19, and Conor Wilson, 20, laden down with Primark bags full of holiday gear. Both are studying hospitality and catering at college and are about to travel to Greece for a placement, where they will learn how to prepare international food.
'I work part-time in a takeaway and we have customers who order burgers or pizza every single day of the week,' says Peterson. 'And because it's delivered they don't even need to leave the house. I know I have a tendency to eat junk, so I am very strict with myself and I go to the gym. But here people feel it's too late or too much effort and they just let themselves go; the worst bit is seeing how overweight their kids are.'
His friend used to work at The Green Bean Cafe in Sunderland, and loved it. 'It was a really nice feeling knowing you were preparing great food from fresh ingredients and giving your customers the very best,' says Wilson. 'I'd love to open something like that here, but it would probably have to be subsidised in some way so people could afford it.'
For its part, Hartlepool borough council is aware of the health emergency it faces and last month revealed it was working on a childhood obesity action plan, to include cooking lessons and providing cooking equipment, while noting it is 'a very complex subject to deal with'.
Its director of public health, Craig Blundred, announced: 'What we're hoping to do through the action plan is work much more closely with children's services and with partners in the health service to try to understand why we're seeing increases [in obesity].
'We understand some of the causes but we don't fully understand why Hartlepool has a much higher level for children that are actually experiencing that.'
Out on the streets of Hartlepool, the mood remains sombre. Students Grace Haran, 21, and her boyfriend, Jack Maiden, 20, are both doing college access courses to study nursing and physiotherapy respectively at university.
'I feel so sad for the kids you see who are overweight and obese,' says Haran. 'They don't have any choice about what they are given to eat and it's having a hugely detrimental effect on their health.'
The couple agree that widespread use of weigh-loss drugs is not ideal but could be a useful means to an end. Maiden believes they should be taken in conjunction with an exercise and healthy eating plan.
'Quick results can be a real incentive,' he says. 'But there needs to be hard work as well or a course of jabs will only ever be a temporary fix that changes nothing in the long run.'
The same could be said of local action plans without serious backup from central government. From its wrecking ball impact on the NHS to its £100 billion drain on the economy, obesity is a long-term, society-wide issue. It needs a long-term, society-wide solution.
The people of Hartlepool are in crisis and in desperate need of hope as well as help. Will they get it any time soon? Right now, I fear there's fat chance.
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