Are you getting enough exercise? One of Ipswich Borough Councils (IBC) priorities is promoting community well-being and a key strand of this is to ‘improve health inequalities in the Borough’.
IBC is investing in improving health inequalities in the borough and have an exceptional track record in offering services to all that make a meaningful impact on their health.
Our Ipswich Fit offer for young people provides bespoke youth sessions at both our swimming pools and sports centres and engages with thousands of young people every year. We have retained our Summer iCard scheme to provide free and discounted physical activity sessions for local young people, and we had 9,376 visits over the six weeks of summer 2025.
On top of this, we had 97 young people attend Swim Camps, and 36 sports sessions were delivered in our parks as well as the 463 within our traditional sports and community settings.
Through the Holiday Activity and Food fund, which the council manages on behalf of Suffolk County Council, we funded 10,863 places with £365,000 for young people over Easter, summer and Christmas last year. Activities such as climbing, team sports, dance, swimming, football, gymnastics, sensory sessions, outdoor play and gardening gave wide options for engaging young people.
For adults, our Ipswich Feel Good Suffolk team have already worked directly with over 150 people. Over half have lost at least 3% of their body weight as a result, and over 80% have increased their levels of physical activity.
IBC is also a keen participant on the Suffolk Health and Wellbeing Board. We are particularly proud to be a member at a time where the latest Public Health Annual Report has been designed and shaped by young people themselves to bring their voices to the discussion on what more we can do to address these pressing issues together. IBC looks forward to being able to work on the issues they have identified as part of a unified local response.
We do hear a lot about childhood obesity in the town. The data analysis is complex but suggests in the Reception year, Ipswich performs close to the national average but in Year 6, obesity rates are higher at 23.4% compared to 22.2% as a national average. This indicates that while early intervention appears to be working reasonably well in Ipswich, the challenge intensifies through primary years—pointing to a critical need to deepen support and interventions, particularly in later primary school.
Something like childhood obesity has many factors for which IBC has no responsibility for, such as schools, education and family health services. Adult obesity is equally complex, with many factors outside our direct control.
The Labour government has underlined its commitment to get children heathier and more active following recent figures revealing the scale of the childhood obesity problem. They intend to introduce restrictions on junk food advertising and high-caffeine energy drinks, as well as pledging to expand free school meals and universal free breakfast clubs’.
IBC work closely with key partners on projects which promote healthy weights as part of a healthy life, such as the Active Suffolk-led Sport England Place programme, where we are working towards bringing over £1milion of investment into key areas of Ipswich where additional support for health is needed.
IBC has installed new outdoor fitness equipment in seven parks across the town, providing residents and visitors with more opportunities to stay active and improve their wellbeing outdoors.
I believe that as a council, given the levers at our disposal, we do an excellent job providing opportunities for people to have a healthy lifestyle.
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