To review the progress of the Sustainable Food Partnership and draft Torbay Food Strategy, encompassing food insecurity (sustaining social supermarkets etc), community growing projects and use of Council assets; and reducing food waste and make recommendations to the Cabinet.

The Cabinet Member for Housing and Finance – Councillor Tyerman, Director of Public Health – Lincoln Sargeant and Partnership and Inclusion Manager – Laura Hill presented the submitted papers in respect of the Torbay Food Strategy which aims to encourage and support a ‘social movement’ around food in Torbay.  The Director of Adult and Community Services – Jo Williams also attended the meeting and responded to questions. 

The Strategy had been informed by consultation and engagement with colleagues working in and around food in Torbay including the Torbay Food Partnership and Local Motion Torbay.  This centred around six key themes:

·                     Food Governance and Strategy - Taking a strategic and collaborative approach to good food governance and action.?

·                     Good Food Movement - Building awareness, active food citizenship and a local good food movement.

·                     Healthy Food for All - Tacking food poverty, diet related ill-health and access to affordable healthy food.

·                     Sustainable Food Economy - Creating a diverse, prosperous and diverse sustainable food economy.?

·                     Catering and Procurement - Transforming catering and procurement and revitalizing local and sustainable food supply chains.?

·                     Food for the Planet - Tackling the climate and nature emergency through sustainable food and farming and an end to food waste.?

Members asked questions in relation to the written response provided in respect of free school meals and how the Council could help parents to take up the offer and be confident that children would not be identified as taking this up; why does Torbay have an opt in system for free school meals when other areas automatically enrol children using Department for Work and Pensions data and people have to opt out; how many children were eligible for free school meals but do not take it up because they don’t like school dinners, was the type of food on offer putting children off and did schools offer themed base meals e.g. Chinese to celebrate Chinese New Year (a written response would be provided to this question); were school meal providers and schools themselves part of the Food Partnership; what was the criteria for identifying land to grow food and how do communities nominate a piece of land; the involvement of the Community Partnerships in communication and engagement on the Torbay Food Strategy Action Plan; there were only 20 responses to the consultation, who was consulted and how was it carried out; where would the Action Plan be presented and what was the timescale for producing this; what plans were in place to ensure people have the skills and knowledge to tackle food insecurity; what would success look like and what were the measures; how did the Council join up with people who have excess food produce to ensure that it gets to those who most need it e.g. produce market; how could the Council work with SWISCo to understand why people were throwing food away and how could the Council support initiatives in communities who want to grow fruit and vegetables in their communities; what consultation would be done to grow the Strategy and inform the annual Action Plans; and how does the Council engage with residential care homes and learning disability homes to ensure their residents have access to healthy food.

In response to questions around free school meals, Members were advised that the written response provided the current situation from a Public Health and Children’s Services perspective.  Further discussions had been held as part of the work on 0-19 Services.  It was acknowledged that take up of free school meals was an important issue and continued work was needed with schools and it would take time to make changes.  The school meal providers and schools were not part of the Food Partnership but there would be further engagement and development with schools as part of this work.

Members were advised that the growing land project was evolving with a mapping exercise carried out on potential suitable pieces of land.  Work would then be done with communities to identify groups that wished to take land on for community growing.  Foxhole had been identified as a pilot area, but it could be challenging identifying the right groups to oversee the work and there was a need to learn from others, what works and what does not, so that it could be rolled out further. 

The Board noted that the formal public consultation was carried out via the Council’s website and there had been a lot of engagement with various groups, including Torbay Food Alliance and Local Motion Torbay, since Covid-19 and following the cost of living crisis.  Whilst there was not a lot of public interest all key players associated with food had been involved in the development of the Strategy e.g. Social Supermarkets.  The Council was considering how it could potentially reimburse people for taking time to help them engage with the Strategy and Action Plans.

In response to questions about the Action Plan, the Board was advised that there was a commitment for the Action Plan to go to the Cabinet with the Torbay Food Strategy.  It was noted that each organisation would have their own Action Plans which would be monitored by the overall Torbay Food Partnership.  Consideration needed to be given about how this would be reported on an annual basis to give assurance that actions were being taken towards delivery of the Strategy’s vision.  There would be measurables included within the Action Plan(s) e.g. sharing surplus food, reduce the levels of food insecurity etc.  The long-term vision was aspirational and linked to community growing schemes which would also include projects such as community cooking courses using the grown food to prepare cheap healthy meals.  There was opportunity to work with schools through after school clubs with the community doing work around skills and also supporting people with learning disabilities, an example of community work was the Tea Leaf Café in Torre.  Some work was being done through the Torbay Food Alliance to secure excess food linking up to the nearest social supermarket but this was not happening on a Torbay wide approach.  Examples of success could be more people regularly eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, a reduction in the percentage of people who were on universal credit reporting food insecurity and having to skip meals.  It was acknowledged that food insecurity was not just about food poverty and more support was required to help households with their total budgets using a systematic approach that took account of fixed household costs such as housing, energy, transport costs that they had little scope to change.  The Strategy included a plan for communication and engagement to grow the membership of the Food Partnership in Torbay and this would include wider community organisations.

Members noted that the Council has good relationships with care homes and learning disability homes and generally the feedback on the quality of the food was positive.  Members were encouraged to report any concerns they may have about individual homes to the Director of Adult and Community Services as poor food could be a sign of other issues at the home.  Public Health would be carrying out a survey on oral health and would explore including reference to healthy eating as part of the survey.  Vulnerable people need to be supported sensitively when trying to encourage them to eat healthily.

Members requested more information on Torbay Local Motion – this can be found on the website at – https://localmotion.org.uk/torbay.

Resolved (unanimously):

That the Cabinet be recommended to approve the Torbay Food Strategy subject to the following:

1.         that the Food Strategy Action Plan be presented the Board and partners involved be invited to contribute;

2.         that the Food Strategy Action Plan be presented to Community Partnerships to help reach out to community groups especially around community growing fruit and vegetables;

3.         to explore how Director of Public Health can work with Managing Director of SWISCo on food waste and why people are throwing food away and how we can support initiatives in communities who want to grow things in their community;

4.         to encourage growers with excess food to join up and help share it with those who are in most need in their community; and

5.         to encourage Councillors to reach out to community groups on community growing projects.