Recommendations

Include a food strategy within climate and nature plans, building on the actions highlighted in this report.
Establish or support an existing cross-sectoral local food partnership.
Seek dedicated funding or earmark funding for work on healthy and sustainable food.
Assign responsibility to a food officer to sit within the public health, economic development or climate team.
Sign up to and track actions on the Every Mouthful Counts toolkit.

Join Planning for the Planet to ensure you are supporting a sustainable food system through planning policy. This includes measures to scrutinise intensive livestock applications thoroughly and supporting food growing and sustainable farming.
Use the development of your combined authority’s Local Nature Recovery Scheme to put in place a planning requirement that all new farms will enhance biodiversity.

Serve more climate-friendly meals across the council’s services, including schools, nurseries, meal delivery, canteens and care homes. This includes serving more vegetables and pulses, and a less-and-better approach to meat.
Publish timebound and measurable targets for procurement that supports local food businesses and those with ethical and environmental credentials.
Develop good food standards for events, festivals and vendors on council land
Engage with local food suppliers to understand how much food demand they can meet and support them in winning local procurement contracts.
Engage with suppliers on adopting waste and emissions reduction targets.
Use communications to deliver public campaigns that encourage climate-friendly diets.
Promote local food businesses and sustainable food to the public.

Publish timebound and measurable targets for Farming and Food Growing, including:
- Protecting and increasing land for community food growing.
- Improving access to allotments and community growing opportunities.
Publish a map of council landholdings.
Look for opportunities for new farm enterprises, including on peri-urban land.
Promote training materials for agroecological farming and organise workshops to support local farmers to implement it.
Support networking and coordination for groups of farmers to work together and share knowledge on agroecological farming, equipment and purchasing power, as well as to seek funding.
Incorporate climate and nature requirements within tenancy agreements on council-owned farmland.
Develop demonstration farms that use agroecological farming techniques.
Invest in local food infrastructure and support for buying collectives and shared infrastructure, to shorten supply chains and support agroecological farmers and producers.

Publish timebound and measurable targets for reducing food waste and directing unavoidable waste to useful purposes.
Distribute free food waste caddies and compost bins
Run food waste awareness campaigns and events.
Provide a food waste collection service for households, schools and businesses.
Reduce food waste in council-controlled settings, by using better purchasing, portion control and presentation.
Ensure there are routes for edible surplus food to be collected and redistributed.

How metropolitan councils are tackling the climate and nature emergency through food