Local authorities were given responsibility for public health in April, under NHS reforms which aimed to make councils do more to promote healthy living.
But analysis of their current budgets by Local Government Chronicle discloses that 33 of 152 councils have allocated no funds to programmes to tackle child obesity.
Tam Fry, a spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, said: “It is really worrying. The evidence is clear: obesity is the biggest timebomb for the health of our population yet we have got councils who are simply not making it a priority.”
Some of the councils who had not allocated funding said that they were spending money tackling the problem, but not recorded it in the same way.
Latest figures show 22 per cent of children are overweight or obese by the time they start primary school. The number of children treated in hospital for weight-related conditions has quadrupled in the past decade.
Children are currently weighed and measured in the first and last year of primary school in a bid to monitor and tackle the problem. Mr Fry said children needed to be monitored from a far younger age in a bid to prevent obesity.