A NEW initiative to help combat obesity in Torfaen children has received the green light from the council in conjunction with Public Health Wales.

In figures supplied by Public Health Wales, 26.8 per cent of children aged four or five would be categorised as obese or overweight.

This puts Torfaen as 0.3 per cent above the figure for Wales – 26.5 per cent – and ranks the borough’s four to five year olds as the 12th fattest in Wales.

In Gwent, only Blaenau Gwent – 28.1 per cent – and Caerphilly – 27.1 per cent – ranked higher than Torfaen in terms of overweight four and five year olds, from the most recent statistics supplied in 2015 Public Health Wales report.

On Thursday, the executive member for communities at Torfaen council, cllr David Daniels, and cllr Fiona Cross, attended a meeting to discuss the Child Obesity Strategy.

The Child Obesity Strategy is a plan which will be implemented only in Torfaen, used to help the borough’s youngest citizens discover new ways of getting active.

Cllr Cross said: “It is a Torfaen specific strategy which is aimed at helping a host of different groups and teams get projects off the ground with a small pot of funding from the communities area of the council.

“The idea behind the strategy is increasing the activity of children across the borough.

“Jonathan West (principal health practitioner) from Public Health Wales attended the meeting and said that inactivity or people not moving themselves regular is one of the biggest problems facing tackling obesity,” she added.

“The project is still in its initial phases and we should have a better understanding of what is happening by our next meeting,” said cllr Cross.

The research from Public Health Wales found that there was a strong relationship between levels of obesity and deprivation of the area.

According to the statistics, 28.5 per cent of Welsh children from deprived areas were overweight or obese, compared to 22.2 per cent from the country’s least deprived regions.