In my last update I highlighted that one of the areas of my role I’m most looking forward to is setting up a food alliance for Cheshire East. I’m glad to announce that we have now set a date for our launch event – which will take place at 10.30 am on Tuesday 17 October at Congleton Town Hall. The exact format of the event is still being worked on; but I’m delighted that it will be opened by Andrew Forsey National Director of Feeding Britain. You can RSVP here.
For any alliance to be effective it needs to come together around one theme. In this case it’s ensuring everyone across Cheshire East has a ‘Right to Food’ achieved through addressing food insecurity.
What do we mean by ‘the right to food’?
United Nations Special Rapporteur Professor Michael Fakhri defined the right to food as “everyone is entitled to their food always being adequate, available and accessible”.
In a local context, we have two Crewe based Cheshire East councillors to thank for raising this a motion at a full Council meeting. And I have personal reason to thank them - as without them I wouldn't have this role.
But why is it important? Figures from the July 2023 Food Insecurity Tracker - produced by The Food Foundation - highlighted that 9 million adults (17% of households) nationally faced food insecurity(1) across June. If we translate these figures locally – that’s around circa 68,000 individuals or 30,000 households(2). That’s a lot of people struggling or going without.
So, what’s our approach to tackling food insecurity?
The Alliance will be key. They will provide the stewardship for the ‘Right To Food Strategy’ that we’ve started to consult on.
To date we've held three participatory workshops with representatives from Cheshire East Council (covering food poverty, public health, sustainability and emergency household assistance), Town Councils across the region, community food providers - including charities and faith groups, The Trussell Trust, Citizens Advice and The Co-op.
Alongside this we’re drawing on insight from the Cheshire East People's Panel, and from data collected from community food providers across Cheshire East.
At the workshops we asked people to consider the following questions:
Share your biggest challenge / issue relating to community food provision now and over the next 12 months, and
What would you want to see the CEFA achieve in its first 3 years?
We also asked for feedback on three proposed thematic areas of work:
Ensuring people can afford, or have access to, food to make up a healthy diet
Building food confident communities
Support a shift towards a sustainable food system.
Responses and feedback have focused on more families needing support, a lack of funding, too much surplus food going uncollected, better data collection and sharing and opportunities for better coordination and cooperation. So, plenty of food for thought (pardon the pun!)
There’s still time for you to have your say!
We appreciate that not everyone was able to attend a workshop. So, we’ve created an online option to give people an opportunity to feedback. Just follow this link. You can also use this to receive an invitation to the launch of Cheshire East Food Alliance taking place at Congleton Town Hall on Tuesday 17 October at 10.30 am.
Notes:
(1) Measuring Food Insecurity - if a respondent answered Yes to any of these three questions, they are classified as food insecure. Have you/anyone else in your household:
1. had smaller meals than usual or skip meals because you couldn't afford or get access to food?
2. ever been hungry but not eaten because you couldn't afford or get access to food?
3. not eaten for a whole day because you couldn't afford or get access to food?
(2) The figure for Cheshire East is based on 17% of the total Households (n) 174,900 (based on 2021 Census data).
