Issue - meetings

This report puts forward a process and timeline for developing a food poverty action plan for B&NES and investigating the refresh of B&NES Food Strategy.

Jane Middleton addressed the Panel. A copy of the statement can be found on the Panel’s Minute Book, a summary is set out below.

You may remember I brought the idea for a food poverty action plan to the Council meeting in May 2019. So I’m really pleased to see this work being done. And I’m pleased that the report has used the work by Sustain as the basis for some of its research.

All the research makes clear that the main driver of food bank use is welfare policy, especially Universal Credit. This is significant, because we need to remember that the problem is not food shortages; it’s lack of income, whether from benefits or from work.

The key aim of the food poverty action plan must be to try to ensure that people don’t need that food aid in the first place. Unlike charities, the Council can tackle some of the structural causes of food poverty – for example, make sure that the welfare support scheme provides appropriate tailored support rather than just handing out food bank vouchers.

On the specifics of the report, first of all:

Point 3.6 concerns data collection to assess ‘the prevalence and risk of food poverty’. I would strongly urge you to engage with academics on this (either at the University of Bath or elsewhere), in order to arrive at a rigorous, independent assessment of the scale of the problem. There are academics who have carried out this kind of study, and councils who have worked with them, so it shouldn’t be difficult to set that up.

Point 4.7 lists the specific objects of the food poverty action plan. It is, in parts, quite vague – in particular, the point: ‘To develop a food poverty action plan for B&NES with a focus on preventative activity’. I would suggest replacing this with the wording: ‘To prepare and deliver a formal food poverty action plan to identify barriers to accessing affordable and nutritious food and actions to address them’

I would also like to see the following objectives included:

• ‘To reduce residents’ dependency on charitable food aid’;

• ‘To maximise access to local welfare provision and discretionary funds (such as Discretionary Housing Payments and Council Tax Support) and ‘ensure maximum uptake of other entitlements (such as free school meals)’;

• ‘To take measures to avoid means of support that people find stigmatising, e.g. food vouchers’.

In this way, the emphasis is on council action and, while it’s important that the council should support the work of local charities, the main intention should be to take preventive action so people don’t have to rely on charity in the first place.

The Public Health Consultant introduced the report to the Panel. She explained that the report was in response to the Council passing a motion on Food Poverty on 11th July 2019 requesting:

• The Children, Health & Wellbeing Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel to work with local organisations and develop recommendations for a Food Poverty  ...  view the full minutes text for item 39