For cash-strapped councils, turning away much-needed income by restricting adverts for junk food, fossil fuels or other harmful products might seem like a policy they can ill afford.
Authors
- Kate Whitman
Research Fellow, University of Portsmouth
- Alan Leonard
Principal Lecturer in Economics, University of Portsmouth
- Helen Thompson-Whiteside
Associate Professor of Marketing and Society, University of Portsmouth
But a new report, published by the advocacy alliance Sustain and carried out by our team at the University of Portsmouth, suggests otherwise.
Our report found no evidence that councils introducing healthier food advertising policies lost advertising revenue when compared to places without such a policy. The finding held for councils across the UK with different advertising sites (from bus shelters to benches), locations and contract arrangements.
For our analysis, we sent freedom of information requests to all local councils in the UK. From the 360 responses received, only 38 councils provided enough data on the annual percentage change of revenue (between 2019-23) to allow for comparison. Three of those 38 councils had introduced healthier food advertising policies during that five-year period; the rest (35) did not have those policies.
By comparing the revenue of local governments that implemented a healthier food advertising policy to those without, a statistical model assessed whether council revenues were now below what would have been expected had they not implemented a healthier foods advertising policy. The findings show that councils did not lose potential revenue from implementing this policy.
Concern about lost income has been one of the practical arguments made against stronger advertising policies. Yet restricting harmful products does not mean leaving billboards and bus shelters empty. Advertising space can instead be filled by more socially beneficial campaigns, such as healthy products , while companies affected by the rules can switch to promoting products that comply with them.
This can also reduce the financial pressure on other public services. Transport for London’s restrictions on advertising foods high in fat, salt and sugar have been associated with households purchasing around 1,000 fewer calories from unhealthy foods each week. Modelling of the policy estimated that resulting health benefits could save the NHS and social care system £218 million over the lifetime of the current population.
Now councils are beginning to apply the same thinking beyond junk food.
Public bodies are extending the principle already applied to tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food to fossil fuels and other high-carbon products: that publicly controlled advertising space should not be used to promote forms of consumption that undermine public health or environmental goals.
More than a dozen UK councils including Sheffield and Edinburgh have adopted some form of restriction on high-carbon advertising, covering products and services such as fossil fuels, flights and non-electric cars.
And the boundaries continue to expand.
Bristol City Council recently became the first UK council to restrict advertising for ultra-fast fashion (brands that launch new designs on a daily or weekly not seasonal basis, leading to accelerated overproduction and waste) on council-owned sites, alongside new curbs on promoting fossil fuels, SUVs, airlines and cruises. The move brings an industry associated with high levels of production, consumption and waste within the scope of councils’ environmental advertising policies.
In another UK first , Portsmouth City Council included single-use plastics in its list of restricted products, alongside fossil fuels, non-electric cars and unhealthy food. Their inclusion signals a recognition of the environmental costs of disposable plastic packaging – and that an advert for a product packaged in single-use plastic is, in effect, an advert for both.
Radical restrictions
These decisions point towards a change in thinking. By expanding policies to include ultra-fast fashion and single-use plastics, UK councils appear to be recognising a wider range of environmental harms associated with the products advertised in public spaces, from the resources used to produce them to the waste they leave behind.
It also raises a broader question about whether council-owned advertising space should encourage forms of consumption that conflict with councils’ own commitments on public health, climate and waste.
However, developments outside the UK suggest this approach could go further. In May, Amsterdam became the first capital city to introduce legally binding restrictions on public advertising for fossil-fuel products and services. Those include flights, cruises and petrol and diesel cars, as well as meat. The inclusion of meat extends restrictions beyond products directly associated with fossil fuels to another major source of consumption-related environmental impacts.
The question for UK councils, then, is not simply whether these policies work, but how much further they are prepared to go. Until now, the prospect of losing advertising income has provided an economic argument for caution. Our new research weakens that argument.
If local authorities can set stronger standards without sacrificing advertising revenue, they have more room to align their advertising estates with the public health and environmental goals they are already spending money to achieve.
The shifts in both Bristol and Portsmouth show that the boundaries of acceptable advertising are already shifting in the UK. The evidence from our new report suggests councils may be able to afford to be bolder about where those boundaries are drawn.
