The awards were:

• an Excellence Award under the Healthy Workplace Charter for its own healthy workplace initiatives
• a special award for supporting the highest number of local organisations to also become accredited under the London Healthy Workplace Charter.

Also in recent days Greenwich has come a (narrow!) second highest in a table of London boroughs for providing access to affordable and healthy food.

London Healthy Workplace Charter

The London Healthy Workplace Charter helped the Council to implement steps such as:

• helping people return to work when they've been unwell
• making changes in the food that we provide in our café
• having staff compete in the Step Jockey challenge and taking the stairs rather than the lift
• enjoying physical activity together through lunchtime walks, salsa classes and football sessions
• providing staff with long term health conditions direct access to our Expert Patient Programme self-care classes which are run in-house by the Public Health department
• training all staff in Mental Health Awareness. In addition 200 staff have done the full Mental Health First Aid course.

Good Food for London

The Good Food for London report meanwhile praised Greenwich for measures including:

• serving Gold Catering mark meals in the majority of schools and nurseries
• serving cage-free eggs and higher welfare dairy and chicken
• supporting breastfeeding having achieved full Unicef UK baby friendly accreditation
• supporting food growing in the community, schools and in planning policy
• changing food culture in some schools via Food for Life.

Councillor David Gardner, Royal Borough of Greenwich Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care, said: "I am so proud of the work we are doing to help our residents to lead healthier lives. There are so many factors that can impact a person's ability to make healthier choices so it is extremely important that we do whatever we can within our power to make those choices easier.

"Workplace environments that encourage more active lifestyles and doing what we can to make sure people can access healthy food are two such important strands to this work and we will continue to do everything we can as a local authority to support people to lead healthier lives - and to make it easier to do so."