New planning policy could stop take-aways from taking over Birmingham’s high streets. Local Government Correspondent Neil Elkes reports

For many typical high streets in Birmingham independent greengrocers, hardware shops and boutiques have long been replaced by a colourful array of fast food outlets.

A surge in take-aways in the city named as the obesity capital of Europe has raised concerns with health professionals and politicians desperate to find a way to stop them from dominating the towns and suburbs.

A growing number of local campaigns have been springing up to take on the take-away and city planners are drawing up a new policy, a supplementary planning document, to give them more powers to refuse new outlets from setting up shop.

In Boldmere Road, Sutton Coldfield, a Fast Food, We’re Full campaign has been launched. Local shopkeepers’ complaints are similar to those throughout the city, that too many take-aways turn a bustling parade by day into a row of shuttered shops which burst into life at 5pm.

There are gripes about burger boxes, chip wrappers and fizzy drink tins rattling around the streets as well as the late-night noise and nuisance as pub-goers turn out for a midnight feast.

The city’s public health director Jim McManus launched plans to gain tougher health regulations for fast food firms trying to open near schools and in areas hit by obesity problems earlier this year.

Officials want to be able to refuse take-aways on the grounds of health. A quarter of 11 to 12-year-olds are obese in Birmingham.

In Boldmere Road, Gaby Amiel, whose Gaby’s Travel Agency has been trading here since 1986, agrees that the parade has had its fill of take-aways.

“I came in to work on a Monday and there were as many shops closed as open for business. If take-aways want to be here they should open during the day as well, otherwise it creates the wrong impression.’’

A survey of the road, carried out by shopkeepers, shows that 20 per cent of shops are now take-aways. There are also restaurants and pubs.

Urban planning expert and local Labour Party activist Dr Rob Pocock is helping shopkeepers and residents carry out an audit of Boldmere Road to highlight the type of retail they would like to attract.

He said: “This is not just about a negative campaign against fast food. It’s just as much a positive campaign, to attract the right kind of inward investment, that will build up our local centre as a high value, high quality venue where the emphasis is on quality specialist retail shops, stores and businesses, open in the daytime not just at night.”

Every couple of weeks there are a slew of take-away planning applications and each time the objections roll in, not just from the direct competition.

In Quinton a recent campaign was fought against a take-away too close to a school.

Coun Peter Smallbone (Con Quinton) said: “I’m not about telling adults what they can and can’t eat, but I think that most parents would agree that building a hot food take-away next door to Quinton ward’s only secondary school is not a good idea.”

Dr McManus said: “My master plan is to have planning restrictions. In a parade of nine shops, we shouldn’t have more than four that are fast food. I am talking to the cabinet member for planning about this, about if we can stop take-aways being set up or take action because they are not healthy.”

In recent years the council’s planning department has been unable to stem the tide of take-aways and even lost costly appeals over refusals. In a bid to make a change, the department is drawing up a new supplementary planning document, or SPD, for take-aways, which is expected to be ready for consideration in June.

Planning committee chairman Coun Peter Douglas Osborn (Con Weoley) said: “The thorny issue of how many take-aways we want in a parade is the key one. I am waiting to see what our officers come up with.”

A document they may be looking at is an SPD on take-aways from Waltham Forest in Essex which imposes a draconian five per cent limit in most parades and a limit of no more than one within 400 metres of another. There are also limits around schools.

The uncompromising policy states: “An overabundance of hot food takeaways, particularly where they form clusters both within and outside of designated centres can have an adverse impact on the vitality and viability of existing designated shopping centres and on residential amenity.”