Cheshire East Food Alliance | Community & Voluntary Services Cheshire East

The Cheshire East Food Alliance will play a key role in developing a ‘Right to Food’ strategy – to address food insecurity across Cheshire East.

For the Alliance to be successful we need a cross representation of organisations including community groups, charities, faith organisations, local government, the NHS, housing trusts, retailers, other food providers, and a wide range of other groups / people, to come together, to work to address this significant issue.

The project is being led by CVS Cheshire East with funding and support from Cheshire East Council and Cheshire Community Foundation.

The Food Alliance is a member of the Feeding Britain network of regional and local partnerships across the UK.

Christmas & New Year Opening Arrangements

Find the latest updates around Christmas and New Year opening times from Cheshire East community food projects here.

Food Alliance meeting – 10 July 2024

Our latest meeting took place at Congleton Town Hall on Wednesday 10 July 2024. Once again we had representatives from Cheshire East Council – one of the project funders, a wide range of charity, community and faith food delivery organisations and the Co-op. The key themes included:

A review of the new Labour Governments commitment to the food system e.g. Food Security, Household food insecurity, School food, Health Inequalities and Food for the Planet
Food Alliance progress and an update on the Right to Food strategy.

Breakout sessions focussed on the following:

Food Poverty and Insecurity training – we were joined by Tyra Goodwin - Lived Experience Consultant, Cheshire West Voluntary Action who delivered a training session looking at Household Food Insecurity. You can access the training resources here https://cwva.org.uk/foodpovertyandinsecuritytraining15MTZieXRlcw
School Food programmes / School food insecurity – this highlighted that around 470,000 children across the UK are missing out on free school meals (FSM) despite being eligible for them, that in 4 North West Schools are operating food banks and that 93% of Cheshire East Schools report higher levels of food insecurity than 12 months ago.

The themes above will be explored further in four focussed taskforce groups looking at the following:

Providing residents with long-term support to reduce the dependence on food banks
School food: Increasing uptake of free school meals (FSM), Holiday and Food (HAF), School Breakfast Clubs and other programmes.
Increasing community engagement with food and food knowledge - Healthy Eating e.g. Healthy Start
Surplus food model –collaboration with growers, producers, manufacturers and retailers.

Links to the presentations can be found below:

Food Alliance July 2024 – meeting presentation

Food Alliance July 2024 – School Food programmes / School food insecurity

Food Alliance meeting – 22 May 2024

Our second meeting took place at New Life Church in Congleton on Wednesday 22 May 2024. Over 30 people we're in attendance from organisations including both Cheshire East Council and Cheshire Community Foundation - the project funders, a wide range of charity, community and faith food delivery organisations, town councils, housing trusts and the Co-op.

The key themes included:

Numbers of people experiencing poverty and subsequently food poverty. The Trussell Trust nationally reported issuing 3.1m emergency food parcels 2023 – 2024. This seems to be playing out locally as projects across the Alliance are regularly reporting unprecedented levels of demand e.g. one foodbank (not part of The Trussel Trust) has been receiving 210+ referrals per month since January (up over 40% on the same time last year). One community pantry is exceeding 400 shoppers per month (again significantly up on the period last year). Groups are also reporting referrals / shoppers from outside of their geographic area e.g. Holmes Chapel travelling to Macclesfield.
Surplus food. The meeting heard that 4.6 million tonnes of edible food go to waste every year – enough to feed everyone for almost two months. If you include food at the farm gate – this rises to 11 million tonnes: worth £20.8 billion. And in the hospitality and food service sector 18% of the food purchased is being thrown away ( £3 billion in value).

Breakout sessions started to look at both topics and work will continue in the form of task and finish groups looking specifically to 1/ stablish a referral pathway and process (providing residents with long-term support to reduce the dependence on food banks) and 2/ develop a surplus food model covering all businesses across the food system e.g. producers, manufacturers, growers (farmers), retailers & hospitality / food service.

Food Alliance meeting with Graham Brown presenting at the front of a large room with people sitting and listening

Food Alliance May 2024 Meeting Presentation

Cheshire East Food Alliance Right to Food Strategy

Launch event - 17 October 2023

We held our launch event at Congelton Town Hall on Tuesday 17 October 2023. Over 50 people we're in attendance representing a wide range of organisations including both Cheshire East Council and Cheshire Community Foundation - the project funders, a wide range of charity, community and faith food delivery organisations, town councils, housing trusts, the Co-op and FareShare.

A photograph of Graham Brown and Lucie Ferneyhough smiling at the launch event of the Food Alliance

Attendees heard from Andrew Forsey, National Director at Feeding Britain, Lucie Ferneyhough, Communities Team at Cheshire East Council, and Graham Brown, Sector Development Officer for Food Coordination at CVS Cheshire East.

Links to the presentations from the event can be found at the bottom of this page.

Information and resources

You may find the following information and resources useful.

Healthy Start

If you’re more than 10 weeks pregnant or have a child under 4, you may be entitled to get help to buy healthy food and milk. Check out the video below to find out more about the scheme.

Cheshire East Community Food Map

Resources and links

This is a library of resources for food projects, to share good practice and save time. It includes toolkits, webinars and template documents such as policies and job descriptions.