Tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food are the three leading causes of preventable death and ill health in England and key drivers of health inequalities.

The government has set out bold ambitions to improve health and reduce inequalities, with a goal to increase healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035 and cut differences between communities. Yet this target is set to be missed by decades, and successive governments have shied away from the coordinated action required across government to create healthy places and the robust national policy measures specifically needed on alcohol and unhealthy food. In this gap, local authorities have continued to lead local efforts to improve health and tackle inequalities driven by these risk factors.

This briefing aims to support local authorities in England to maximise their local scope for action to improve health and tackle inequalities by addressing tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food.

In it, the authors set out the scale of health impacts associated with these risk factors, outline the roles of national and local government in addressing these challenges and introduce a framework to support local authorities to take ambitious population-level action. To support the framework’s implementation, we include examples of approaches taken by different councils and identify relevant supporting legislation.