Sustainable and Affordable Food for Liverpool City Region: Recommendations for Change

The VS6 Partnership are pleased to publish our latest report developed in collaboration with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the LCR VCFSE sector: “Sustainable and Affordable Food for Liverpool City Region: Recommendations for Change”.

It is widely acknowledged that there are significant proportions of communities and families within the Liverpool City Region (LCR) that have or are currently experiencing food insecurity. Even before 2022’s cost of living crisis, which has compounded existing challenges and barriers, our residents and communities have struggled to access and afford healthy and nutritious food in sustainable ways.

We are therefore seeking to build a Liverpool City Region where everybody has access to affordable, sustainable, and healthy food, where no one goes hungry with our communities resilient to future crises. Our latest report outlines the trajectory to achieving this.

Our 2020 Sustainable and Affordable Food report contained six key strategic visions marking the beginning of a roadmap towards developing a food strategy for the City Region. Building upon this previous work, this latest report contains 11 key recommendations to developing the Combined Authority Sustainable and Affordable Food Strategy for LCR, with actions to address and eliminate food insecurity in the short and long term in collaboration with all sectors.

These recommendations build upon the strategic visions in the previous food report, but also following a community food mapping exercise and a further VS6 Sustainable and Affordable Food assembly event held with the VCFSE sector. The community food mapping highlights where community food organisations exist across LCR including food banks, food pantries and community growers and is a key tool to understanding the community food economy. The report details the findings of this mapping exercise.

Rev Canon Dr Ellen Loudon said:

“As families and households across the country are facing significant challenges compounded by the cost-of-living crisis, pushing people already experiencing food insecurity into further deprivation, we must come together as a City Region to address the root causes of food insecurity and explore opportunities for solutions. This report is essential for us to create a City Region where everyone has access to affordable, sustainable, and healthy food, and we look forward to working closely with the Combined Authority to continue this work.”

Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram/Councillor Janette Williamson said:

“In 2022, it beggars belief that where you are born often determines your life chances – a post code lottery dictating your bank balance, the food you can afford, the diseases you’re likely to develop, and how long you will live. Yet our region is not an outlier, this is the reality facing millions up and down the country who will struggle to put food on the table this winter – some having to make the impossible choice between heating and eating.

“I want our area to lead the way in showing the rest of the country how to help the most vulnerable in our society by treating people as human beings, not statistics. Think of it as ‘radical kindness’ – we’ve stepped up for local people by investing nearly £5m to give families access to the support they need during the cost of living crisis and are helping some of our most vulnerable households to save up to £200 a month on their energy bills through our £60m retrofitting programme.

“I’m incredibly proud of the investments we’ve made to help people through the worst cost of living crisis in a generation – but I’m under no illusion about the scale of the challenge. This report is a roadmap to address the root causes of food insecurity and how, as a community, we can tackle it. It’s going to require huge investment from central government and a collective effort from across our public, private, voluntary, faith and social enterprise sectors on this journey to building a fairer, more socially-just place for our 1.6m residents – where no one is left behind.”

To access the report, please click here.