Good food for every Blackpool neighbourhood: let's decide how to spend it together
Today the Environment Secretary, Angela Eagle, announced that Blackpool will receive £222,000 through the new Good Food Neighbourhoods programme. We're one of 45 areas across England to get the funding, which is aimed at communities with some of the highest levels of deprivation and childhood obesity.
It’s right that Blackpool should be top of the government’s priorities. We face some of the highest levels of food-related health problems and deprivation in the country. With the second highest density of fast food outlets in the country and high levels of poverty meaning a lack of access to nutritious food, obesity is one of the most difficult issues we face.
72% of adults in Blackpool are overweight or living with obesity. In children at reception age, its 27.4% and by year six, a shocking 42.3%.
These are some of the reasons that the House of Lords’ Food, Diet and Obesity Committee visited Blackpool last year. It’s report Recipe For Health: A Plan to Fix Our Broken Food System, not only highlights Blackpool as a critical case study but our potential to lead meaningful change too.
Grow Blackpool @TheGrange
This funding allows us to make a start – helping us move beyond crisis response. Instead of relying on emergency food parcels, the aim is to build support that helps people before they get to that point, such as community food shops, mobile greengrocers, lunch clubs, community kitchens and cooking and nutrition programmes. The government has deliberately kept it flexible so that local areas can decide what works best.
I want that decision to be made together and there’s a lot of people in Blackpool who deserve a seat at the dinner table.
We have some brilliant food projects making a real difference, which I've been lucky enough to see in action.
At the Grange, Grow Blackpool has a growing project and a café serving affordable, nutritious food on an estate with no shop selling fresh food and Come Cook With Us on Central Drive offers relaxed, hands-on cooking sessions, welcoming people of all ages and backgrounds to build confidence in preparing easy, nutritious meals.
At the World Food Cafe at Come Cook With Us
The Community Grocery in Bispham and the Big Food Truck are both bridging the gap between supermarkets and food banks and at Blackpool Learning Rooms, adult learners are picking up the basics of cooking and budgeting on the Eat Well Spend Less course.
Meanwhile, Blackpool Food Partnership is already bringing all these groups and more together to work towards building a fairer food system.
The people running these projects, and the charities, faith groups, schools, health services, businesses and council teams working alongside them, already know what our neighbourhoods need.
Building on the Emergency Cost of Living Summit I convened with local partners earlier this year, myself and Blackpool North MP Lorraine Beavers will be jointly convening a Blackpool Food Neighbourhoods Summit to begin work with these partners and ensure this money enables that work to move at pace. I have already invited the Environment Secretary to join us.
That means working out where the gaps are, what's already working and deserves backing, and where a new idea could make the biggest difference. Residents' voices need to be at the heart of it, because the best solutions will be the ones people actually want to use.
£222,000 won't fix everything but spent carefully and shaped by the people who know Blackpool best, it can help us build on the foundations that are already here. More places where neighbours come together, healthier food within reach of every family, and a food system that puts our community's health first.
