Sustainable food places: Understanding the contribution to local government

Jones, Mat; Hills, Sarah

Abstract

Local food partnerships have become an increasingly widespread feature in localities across the UK. The membership of the Sustainable Food Places Network has over 95 local food partnerships, and a wider number of newly formed partnerships are seeking to join the network. These partnerships all share close links with local government bodies and are often closely aligned in their priorities.

This report is one part of the wider evaluation of the Sustainable Food Places programme in phase three of its development between 2019-2024. Through in-depth qualitative interviews, the purpose of this element of the evaluation was to understand the perspectives of local government representatives on the contribution of food partnerships and the relationship to local priorities on food and other policy issues.

This work is ongoing, so the summary presented here is an interim report of initial findings. To date we have interviewed senior leaders in local government including those with responsibilities for local economic development, spatial planning, public health, and sustainability, plus representation through the NHS (n=20). We also interviewed councillors who held briefs for food related issues in their local authority (n=5). In future research, we intend to collect the perspectives of further local government representatives to enhance our understanding of the field.

The findings from this research suggest that local food partnerships contribute to the objectives and work of local government in a number of ways. This includes bringing a systems perspective on how food relates to local priorities on health, economic resilience and environmental sustainability, bringing sustainable food expertise into local decision-making, giving extra capacity to council teams, catalysing new initiatives, the ability to engage a diverse range of stakeholders and access alternative sources of funding, tapping into the experience and resources of the national Sustainable Food Places programme and providing a platform to celebrate the work and achievements of local partners. Local stakeholders also reported a number of challenges for local government work with food partnerships. Key issues were the limited capacity within local teams to engage with food partnership work, measuring the impact of food partnerships, lack of agency in food issues that lay beyond local boundaries and lack of secure resourcing for food partnerships.

• Report Type: Consultancy Report
• Acceptance Date: Jun 3, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jun 3, 2024
• Publication Date: Sep 3, 2024
• Deposit Date: Sep 12, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781860436222
• Keywords: local food partnerships, food system, local government
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/12884144