Enfield's children are the fattest in London, according to The Annual Report of The Director of Public Health

According to a health report, a staggering 14.6 per cent of reception-age children in the borough are obese - more than five per cent above the average in England.

And by the time they reach year six, more than a quarter of children are obese - six per cent higher than the national average.

Dr Shahed Nizam Ahmad, joint director of public health, said the situation in Enfield is the “worst it has ever been” and drastic action is needed to ensure the problem is resolved.

He said: “What we want to do is to really make children’s obesity everybody’s business over the next year or so.

“We want to make sure that this information gets out to people and everybody understands that it is an issue for Enfield.

“We want the public to take ownership of this issue.”

But according to The Annual Report of The Director of Public Health, adult obesity in Enfield stands at 23.2 per cent - one per cent below the London average.

Christine Hamilton, Cabinet Member for Community Wellbeing and Public Health, admitted the borough’s more than 300 fast food outlets are likely to be contributing to the growing childhood obesity problem.

She said poverty and deprivation are linked to people “going for the cheaper options” and it is essential to educate and encourage families to buy healthy, rather than highly-calorific, food.

She said: “We will be focusing on this because it’s just not good enough.

“We are expecting to turn it around and league tables do highlight the issues but at the end of the day we want our kids to be healthy and to have great lives and not to have illnesses that are related to weight.”

Cllr Hamilton said improvement may well have been already made since the latest figures - which were taken between 2010 and 2011 - were recorded.

Despite the alarming statistics, Dr Ahmad said there is a “breadth of advice” available about childhood obesity and he is “fairly confident” the borough will be able to resolve the issue over the coming year.

He pinpointed key projects including Eat Better, Start Better run by the School Food Trust, which works with young children to teach them about healthy eating.

The Let’s Get Cooking campaign, which provides healthy-eating cookery lessons in schools throughout the UK, has been recently expanded to ten more schools in Enfield.

Parents with children weighed through the National Child Measurement Programme were also written to this year with information about their child’s measurements to help them address obesity if it was found to be an issue.

He stressed how important it is for parents to ensure helpings are dished out in child sizes, swapping calorific snacks for healthier options while considering ways children can increase the amount of exercise they do each day.