Brighton & Hove Food Partnership has been supporting the Emergency Food Network since 2013. The Brighton & Hove Food Strategy Action Plan was adopted by partners in 2018 and has a five-year timeline. Brighton Food Factory increased their operations and started delivering to a wide range of community organisations at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, forming a food distribution hub. 

The initial objectives of the Affordable Food Projects were to:

• Reduce demand on food banks and the emergency food sector 
• Reduce food poverty and provide an answer for long-term food poverty 
• Provide healthy, sustainable, nutritious, locally sourced food to people in poverty 
• Reduce food waste along the chain and buy food from surplus sources such as Fareshare Work in partnership to strengthen outcomes, share learning, connect and co-create (the projects were initiated and developed by community members, some with lived experience of poverty and using a food bank)

The Affordable Food Projects are member models, where people pay a small fee, for which they get a much greater amount of food in return. The subscription collectively has been used to pay for Fareshare surplus food and to bulk purchase extra food. The food has been purchased from a social enterprise called Brighton Food Factory who predominantly source their food from local farms. Brighton Food Factory have been supporting local food economies by reducing the supply chain. They sell directly to restaurants and caterers which part-subsidises the food which they sell to the Affordable Food Projects at cost. This has environmental benefits by saving carbon from multiple deliveries into the city, reducing congestion’s impact on urban pollution and by supporting regenerative farming. They have also set up a farming collective group to understand barriers to growing more food locally and to find solutions for local food production and distribution. 

The Affordable Food Projects were initiated and developed by community members, some with lived experience of poverty and using a food bank. They are all membership-led organisations, where members are encouraged to volunteer and give back to the project. This is empowering for those that choose to volunteer. 

The Affordable Food Projects are part of the Emergency Food Network – which is a partnership of over 50 organisations across the city working together to tackle food poverty, such as food banks, money advice organisations and different Council departments. This is coordinated by Brighton & Hove Food Partnership, who also coordinate the Food Strategy Action Plan – which has been developed from the previous Food Poverty Action Plan. 

The Affordable Food Projects were designed with ‘implementation of policies supportive of sustainable local food’ as their overarching goal. As part of this there is an Expert Panel including experts by experience from within the community, who influence the strategic direction of the Food Strategy Action Plan. 

The Affordable Food Projects started operating in November 2020 (although some of them opened as recently as March 2021). The projects are intended to provide a long-term, financially sustainable answer to providing food for people who are struggling to afford food, but not yet at ‘emergency’ stage. This is dependent on continuing to find the right model under which to operate. The parallel work about food policy, whole supply solutions and sustainable solutions to food poverty is ongoing. 

Knowledge transfer to the circular economy route map to 2035 and city region plan will acknowledge the role of cities in both governance, education and training programmes and dedicated policies to support and enable the transition towards a healthy, sustainable and fair food system.

The total budget from September 2020 for the Affordable Food Network activities is ~£184,000/ 213,020 euros. Half of this was from the Lottery Coronavirus Support Fund, just under a quarter was from the projects own fundraising and the remainder was via Brighton & Hove Food Partnership and Brighton & Hove City Council. The Local Authority also provided meanwhile-lets of buildings for food processing and for the storage of food. The Food Factory was funded as part of the project to ensure a focus on building resilience and local supply.

Brighton is the first city in the UK to achieve the Gold Sustainable Food City Status.

The neighbourhood located Affordable Food Projects are currently supporting 500 adults and 285 children. 

A thorough, well established community food hub evaluation framework was used to measure success. The positive impact on everyday life of residents is outlined in the mixed methods evaluation report. Multiple positive outcomes and opportunities were identified across social, economic, and environmental domains. 

74 % of members feel connected to other people as a result of the projects (despite lockdown restrictions). 

74 % of members feel that they can eat better within their budget. 

60 % of members are eating more vegetables. 

56% have tried new foods. 

Key findings include increased access to affordable food for marginalised groups, significant financial gains for the local farming community and improved dignity in accessing lower cost food. 

A 59% reduction in CO2 produced via Brighton Food Factory distribution compared to individual deliveries carried out through fragmented agreements with individual farms is a very important finding for food systems. 

The evaluation recommends reflection on the wider economic development of the projects, inclusion for marginalised groups and consideration of the growth and recovery of personal and community wellbeing. 

Changes that have been made as a result of the evaluation include Brighton & Hove Food Partnership support to integrate the Healthy Start voucher scheme into the food projects. This scheme provides free vitamins and vouchers for food and milk. 

The challenges faced are mainly to do with financial viability. The projects have been heavily subsidising the buying in of food to give greater availability (as an emergency covid response), but this will not be sustainable in the long-term. 

Space for storage and project work is an ongoing and changeable issue as is access to vehicles and drivers. 

Most of the projects require support in business management and wish to increase market access for small and medium scale businesses.

There is commitment to increase and support these projects due to the overwhelmingly positive outcomes of the Affordable Food Projects. Brighton Food Factory feel that a key priority should be helping community projects understand and value that the slight extra they are paying for local vegetables has a large impact in supporting the local circular economy.

The Affordable Food Projects combined web of activity spans the local food supply chain and has community participation at its core. Although the key objective is to reduce food poverty they continuously and consciously progress sustainability objectives on carbon reduction, food waste and co-creation of food policy. Neighbourhood projects are working together to share skills, information and combine purchasing of produce. In this way they are building the capacity of volunteers and staff and increasing the resilience of the network. City retail and catering businesses support the model by purchasing via Brighton Food Factory adding to the resilience of local farmers. Ecological sustainability outcomes included increased biodiversity, increased use of cover crops, improved soil quality, increased use of renewable energy, reduced food waste, reduced food packaging and reduced greenhouse gas emission (e.g. reduced van journeys into the city as produce was collected from multiple producers). The Circular Economy route map has been created and can be used to navigate the next step of the process focusing on food. The Surplus Food Network enables community grown food and surplus donations to be shared. It includes the allotment 'glut huts', Gleaning, Real Junk Food Project, Fareshare and UK Harvest. New Good Food Buying Standards demonstrate how the city continues to implement sustainable food policy. There is clarity and flexibility in this approach to food system transformation. 

The Affordable Food Projects working together with the Emergency Food Network, Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, Brighton Food Factory and Local Authority have been able to connect, learn from each other and co-create this project to improve access to good quality healthy fruit and vegetables and support local farmers.

The Affordable Food Projects and all their partners have demonstrated how to reach social and environmental outcomes across the local food supply chain from farm to fork built on solidarity and trust, not competition.

The learning will be shared through the Sustainable Food City (Places) network as the concept is transferrable. Affordable Food Projects are an important part of food policy implementation, revealing pathways by which other outcomes can be reached.

Originally published by EUROCITIES, the network of 130 European cities: Link