PIE-BYE: British town blocks new pizza joint, saying area kids are too fat

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Officials in a British town say an independent takeout pizza chain’s desire to expand is a pie-in-the-sky plan, insisting area’s children are too fat.

Woody’s Pizza operates a pair of locations in West Yorkshire, and its owners wanted to open a third site in Bacup, Lancashire.

Owner Colum Huslter asked for permission to take over the site of a former cafe and wine bar, which had recently permanently closed, the New York Post reported.

The takeout joint claims to use “minimal salt and sugar” in its recipes, and the owner insisted that ingredients would even be purchased from the town’s local market.

Council leaders weren’t having any of it, saying the new pizzeria was a recipe for disaster and contravened local efforts to fend off childhood obesity.

Previous plans to replace an ice cream and dessert shop on the same road with a hot food takeout restaurant were thwarted by town officials for the same reasons two years ago.

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Local resident Eric Halliwell, 75, said he didn’t believe children in the area were fat, and disagreed with the decision to get in the way of the new pizza joint opening.

“I don’t think there is an issue. The children are all right, I’ve seen children and I haven’t seen anything that’s obese,” he said, per the Post.

He added: “They’re slim, they have boxing gyms and everything, so why worry about the obese?

“The more business you get, the more people will come; you need to get people to come into Bacup, not go out of Bacup. If they don’t come here, they’ll go somewhere else, they’ll always find somewhere.”

According to the Post, Rossendale Borough Council’s rules state that it won’t support any planning permission for hot food takeout establishments in areas where more than 15% of “year 6” pupils or 10% of “reception-class age” pupils are classified as obese.

Public health bosses, however, say that 20% of 10- to 11-year-old pupils and 11.6% of reception-aged kids are obese in the Greensclough ward area.

As for the pizza joint, senior planning officer Claire Bradley said the restaurant “fails to do justice to a heritage building” and lectured adding another takeout restaurant to the 26 that already exist in the town would “not add anything to the diversity of offer in Bacup.”

In its information shared with town officials, Woody’s said: “We are like no other takeaway. We don’t do dirty oil, we don’t do huge extractions, late nights and delivery drivers pulling up on our curb. We don’t use lots of salt and sugar, and we don’t buy in cheap frozen produce to fry. We buy direct from our market in Todmorden and Hebden Bridge … always have and always will. We intend to buy direct from Bacup Market, too, as per our model of supporting local markets and businesses. We are different, we are a credit to our community, and they love us. Please allow us to come to Bacup and carry on our journey.”

In a notice published on Dec. 16, Rossendale Council refused planning permission on the grounds of there being too many obese kids in the town, adding that it would “detract to an unacceptable extent from the living conditions of residents living in the vicinity of the site.”