“Our time has come”: Food partnerships recognised as essential local infrastructure

On 5 November 2025, 60 food partnership and community representatives, alongside 50 MPs, civil servants and representatives from eight food and farming NGOs, convened at Westminster for the Sustainable Food Places (SFP) Day of Celebration and Action. Discussions centered around how we build a vibrant food culture in every community, using the power of healthy, sustainable and inclusive food programmes to address the challenges we face as a society: slow economic growth and the cost-of-living, the rising NHS bill, an unstable climate and community division.

The annual event brings together food partnership coordinators and community representatives with their local MPs to discuss how they can work together to help their communities prosper through healthy, sustainable food interventions, and the policies necessary to enable local food activity to have a greater impact. The event showcases the UK-wide movement of food partnerships, now established in 123+ local areas comprising over a third of the UK’s population.

"Our time has come and our doors are open."

Sustain’s CEO Kath Dalmeny’s opening statement to attendees at the start of the event was a reminder of the great progress the SFP network has made in campaigning for a whole systems approach to improving food supply and access. The Government’s announcement of a Food Strategy this year recognises the role of "vibrant local food cultures" and the transformational work of place-based, community-rooted actors such as food partnerships. 

The Government’s Food Strategy acknowledges the central role of food, noting “UK’s food sector is the beating heart of our economy” but also recognises the challenges of the rising cost of living, increasing obesity and the ever-present risks of climate change.  

Olivia Blake, MP for Sheffield Hallam and sponsor for the event also spoke, acknowledging the critical importance of food as a defining characteristic of a fair society: 

“Good, healthy, sustainable food should not be a privilege, but a fundamental part of what it means to live with dignity and security.”

A long-standing champion of community food support infrastructure and enshrining a Right to Food into law, Olivia shared her sense of pride for the work happening at a grassroots level in Sheffield and declared to the audience “You are the National Food Service.”

Fellow keynote speaker Ann Davies, MP for Carmarthenshire, reflected on the groundbreaking work happening through the county's food partnership, Bwyd Sir Gâr Food. Having taken over the running of Bremenda Isaf, a council farm in Carmarthenshire, Bwyd Sir Gâr Food is trialing new ways of getting local vegetables onto the public plate. Capturing the imagination of both councils and MPs in the room, she declared:

“We’re getting locally grown veg into procurement, onto children’s school plates. It’s amazing what can be done with two acres. If we can do this in Carmarthenshire, we can do this all over Wales, we can do this all over the UK. It can be done!”

Local food partnerships are proven change-makers, developing, resourcing and embedding into local strategies initiatives that are changing people’s lives through improved access to healthy, sustainable and fairly traded food. But they need national policy support to scale their impact ensuring every area benefits from a better local food system. The Sustainable Food Places network called on MPs to support their local food partnerships in the following ways:

• As the UK Government’s Food Strategy progresses, visit local food projects and consult your local food networks as experts on locally-powered solutions to the challenges facing them and what they'd like to see in the Government's Strategy and Action Plan
• Promote your food partnership in Parliament as key players in improving health, sustainability, and local economies
• Champion legislation to lock in national food security by levelling the playing field for healthy, sustainable and community-benefit food businesses to thrive and ensure affordable, nutritious food is a mainstay of living in the UK
• Promote a move away from 'food banking' as the standard response to food insecurity by championing cash-first approaches and implementing dignity standards in community advice and support pathways
• Call for a removal of barriers to families accessing vital children’s nutritional safety nets by enabling auto-enrolment for the Healthy Start Scheme and Free School Meals and easing the burden off community groups to promote uptake.

For more detail on the Sustainable Food Places national policy asks, see the Sustainable Food Places Policy Briefing.