• Sheffield City Council agreed on Monday to introduce the advertising ban 
  •  It is expected to come into force next month and will apply to its social media

A local council has banned adverts of ‘harmful’ campaigns in a drive to meet its green targets, despite facing a £17.4million funding shortfall. 

Sheffield City Council agreed on Monday to introduce a new advertising policy that will ban campaigns for airlines and airports, junk food, vaping, gambling and cars, including hybrid models across the city. 

The move, which is expected to come into force next month, will apply to all council-owned billboards, its social media pages, website, publications and any sponsorship arrangements.

It said it expects the impact of the new policy to be between £14,000 and £21,000, which it described as ‘low’ compared to costs incurred through pressure on the NHS and other services. 

Sheffield City Council agreed on Monday to introduce a new advertising ban that will crack down on campaigns for airlines and airports, junk food, vaping, gambling and cars, including hybrid models across the city. Pictured: Sheffield Town Hall

Sheffield City Council agreed on Monday to introduce a new advertising ban that will crack down on campaigns for airlines and airports, junk food, vaping, gambling and cars, including hybrid models across the city. Pictured: Sheffield Town Hall

An aerial panorama of Sheffield city centre cityscape. The local council is expected to experience a £17.4m shortfall this year

An aerial panorama of Sheffield city centre cityscape. The local council is expected to experience a £17.4m shortfall this year 

This comes months after it was revealed that the council is expected to experience an overspend of £17.4million for the year to date.

Some are concerned that this measure will only make this shortfall worse, by decreasing the revenue available to cash-strapped councils.  

A spokesman for the Advertising Association said: ‘Efforts to tackle climate change are vital, and the Advertising Standards Authority is already taking significant action to ensure all claims, including environmental claims, are legal, decent, honest and truthful.

‘However, this kind of action by councils simply reduces the revenue available to fund public services and denies the right for many companies to legally advertise their products and services, which provides jobs and incomes to thousands of people up and down the country.’

Marieanne Elliot, a Sheffield Green Party councillor who supported the policy, said the ban ‘tackles some of the impacts of consumerism, advertising and injustice’.

She said: ‘If we seriously want to move away from greenwashing and promoting products and foods that are making our health worse and negatively affecting our wellbeing we need policies like this.’

Pedestrians pass an advertisment for fast food as they make their way through Nottingham city centre

Pedestrians pass an advertisment for fast food as they make their way through Nottingham city centre

Fast food billboard in Manchester

Fast food billboard in Manchester

Ms Elliot also said that she would like to see the policy go further by banning adverts for major banks that finance fossil fuel production, such as Barclays and HSBC.

Restrictions on advertising for fossil fuels is currently a policy at Cambridgeshire County council, Coventry City Council and Somerset Council, but Sheffield’s move is the most radical ban to date. 

Last year Sheffield City Council had to issue a four-page apology to residents after an inquiry found it had behaved dishonestly during a dispute over the felling of healthy trees in the city in a £2.2billion street improvement project. 

On March 6 2023, the Sheffield Street Trees Inquiry Report by Sir Mark Lowcock found the council also misled the high court twice during the row – during which elderly residents were arrested and held for eight hours for trying to protect the trees.

In autumn 2016, council contractors dragged residents out of bed to move their cars at 4.45am to begin cutting down trees, before protesters arrived. The scenes were compared to ‘something you’d expect to see in Putin’s Russia’ by former Sheffield Hallam MP Nick Clegg.

Post source: Daily mail

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