CITY bosses are to crack down on childhood obesity as “worrying” figures revealed that the number of obese and overweight children in Southampton has “significantly” increased over the past years.

Between 13,000 to 13,700 youngsters aged two to 17 years old in the city are overweight with more than a half of them being obese, new figures have revealed.

The data released by the city council showed that children in Year 6 aged between 10 and 11 years old are the most affected.

The figures revealed that the proportion of overweight (including obese) Year 6 children in the city rose from 30% in 2006/07 to 36.1% in 2018/19, with the rate of obese 10 to 11 years old increasing from 16.9% to 22.9% over the same period of time.

Experts said the data are “significantly higher”.

It comes as figures referring to 2018/19 also showed that the 22.9% of Year 6 children in Southampton is obese against a national average of 20.2%.

The figures are lower for children aged four to five years old with 22.3% of them being overweight or obese, 0.3% less than the national average. Now city councillors have launched an inquiry to look into how to tackle what has been described as an “obesity epidemic”.

Professor Barrie Margetts, councillor for Coxford ward and academic in nutritional epidemiology, is one of the members of the inquiry panel.

He described the figures as “horrendous” and said: “The fact that Southampton is doing relatively worse from Year R to Year 6 says that there’s something we are not doing right in this city that we need to sort out. We have a lot of deprivation, people are making very difficult choices about what they can afford to buy.”

At its first meeting held on Tuesday night, the panel was told that deprivation, level of education, genes and lack of physical activity are among the factors that lead to obesity.

Debbie Chase, service lead for public health at Southampton City Council, told the panel the authority has made “fantastic progress” in tackling obesity over the past years but more needs to be done.

Over the next six months the cross-party panel will meet with experts before coming up with recommendations that will be considered by cabinet members. After the meeting councillor Dave Shield, cabinet member for healthier and safer city, said: “We’ve got an obesity epidemic in this city. It is happening everywhere but some of the revelations tonight were worrying. We recognise that we have a challenge in Southampton with childhood obesity. Hopefully this inquiry will give us some points on how we can get to grips to that.We have done some good things and we need to do more.”