We’ve recently reviewed our health promotion policies and are considering some important updates. Now we want to hear what you think about these proposed changes.
We’re proposing to merge our current Healthy Beverages, Smokefree and Vapefree, and Sun Protection policies into a single, comprehensive policy. There are a range of proposed changes in each of these categories.
Our proposed Health Promotion Policy (healthy beverages, smokefree and vapefree, and sun protection) 2024, if adopted, would introduce several changes aimed at enhancing community health and wellbeing.
Consultation document: Draft Health Promotion Policy(PDF, 3MB)
The purpose of our proposed policy is to improve people’s health
The aim of our proposed policy is to promote healthier lifestyle choices for Palmerston North residents and visitors.
As well as owning land and running public facilities, we’re also a major provider of events in the city. This means we have the opportunity to determine how our public spaces and events are managed. The proposed policy aims to guide us in running these in a way that reflects our community’s values by encouraging behaviour change in the places, facilities and events we manage.
Read about the changes we're proposing
We're proposing to combine the Healthy Beverages, Smokefree and Vapefree, and Sun Protection policies into one policy, titled Health Promotion Policy (healthy beverages, smokefree and vapefree, and sun protection) 2024.
The draft policy targets events defined as ‘Council-delivered community events’. These are events directly delivered by us for the community. For example, Esplanade Day and our New Year’s celebration.
We're also proposing to extend the list of Council facilities where sugar-sweetened beverages can't be sold. (In other words, beverages with calorific sweetener, including some carbonated soft drinks, fruit drinks and flavoured milks.) This is to reflect current practices by facilities that have already transitioned to removing these from their supply stock.
These new facilities are: Caccia Birch, Central Energy Trust Arena, Central Energy Trust Wildbase Recovery, isite Palmerston North, Palmerston North City Council Civic Administration Building and Customer Service Centre, Palmy Conference and Function Centre, Youth Space.
Other proposed changes include:
- requiring smokefree and vapefree signs to be in te reo Māori and English
- requiring sunblock stations to be available at Council-delivered community events scheduled between September to April (daylight saving months)
- an update to the structure of the policy including the strategic content, purpose, objectives, and principles
- expanding the mandate of the current smokefree and vapefree reference group to become the health promotion reference group
- adding a requirement to raise public awareness of the policy
- adding a requirement to advocate to the government on matters to achieve the objectives of the policy.
You can find more detailed information on our proposed changes in the consultation document.
Next steps
Submissions closed on Friday 8 November. Thank you to everyone who had your say.
We expect to hold hearings in December 2024 at Council’s Community Committee. We’ll write to all submitters and update this page once a date is confirmed.
Elected members will then meet in February 2025 to consider all submissions. We expect to adopt the final Health Promotion Policy in March 2025.