Scotland's biggest local authority is planning to ban fast-food vans from operating within a 250-metre radius of secondary schools in a move aimed at tackling obesity amongst children.

Glasgow City Council has said that it is prepared to go to court to defend the ban if, as seems inevitable, it is challenged by fast-food vendors on the grounds of a restriction of trade.

The council's plan is detailed in a report due to go before councillors on Friday and comes after it emerged that first-year pupils in eight Glasgow secondary schools are to be banned from August next year from leaving their school grounds in an experiment seeking to limit the consumption of fast food by children.

Pupils will be required to stay on school premises and bring their own lunch or buy food from the school canteen. In some case pupils may, if it is deemed appropriate, return home for their lunch. If successful, the scheme will be extended to all secondary schools in Glasgow.

However, in an even more radical move, council officials want to remove burger, chip and other fast-food vans outside secondary schools - sometimes several of them at one time.

Glasgow's licensing committee is to be asked to bring forward options to restrict trading by these vans outside schools.

The council is expected to phase in the ban, with a restriction on operating within a 250-metre radius of schools becoming a condition of granting or renewing a trader's licence. The licence would be withdrawn immediately if the ban was breached.

A senior council source said yesterday: “I suppose you could say we are declaring war on the presence of these vans outside schools. If that is how it is characterised then, yes, that is what we are doing.

“There are of course nightmare legal issues around this, but we want to do this and we will, if required, go to law if there is a court challenge.”

The move has been prompted by complaints from head teachers who have become increasingly concerned about the number of pupils who rely on the vans for their lunch, ignoring healthier options in the school canteen. Councillor Gordon Matheson, Glasgow's executive member for education, said in the report: “There is little point in offering healthy lunches if thousands of our pupils leave school to buy chips.”

It is understood that while the burger vans will be targeted in the licensing crackdown, councillors are unlikely at present to take a similar line against shops in some school neighbourhoods that sell fast food products to pupils.

Scottish children have developed a liking for a diet that is much less healthy than that of young people in other European countries.

Nearly one in five boys (18 per cent) in Scotland and more than one in seven girls (14 per cent) aged 2 to 15 are classed as obese.

While official statistics show that the take-up of school lunches among primary children in Glasgow is one of the highest in Scotland - at about 65 per cent - at secondary level it is only 32 per cent, well below the Scottish average of 43 per cent.

The council has attempted to increase the number of secondary pupils taking school lunches by introducing so-called “fuel zones” in Glasgow schools where healthy options are available at a cost of £1.15 per meal.

Times Recommends

• The bright side of this winter rain
• Story behind the picture: Snow Leopard, 2008
• Times Charity Appeal: The Place2Be