Brighton and Hove receive first Gold Sustainable Food Place Award
Sustainable Food Places, the UK programme led by Soil Association, Food Matters and Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, is pleased to announce that Brighton and Hove is the first UK location to receive the prestigious Gold Sustainable Food Place Award recognising pioneering work around good food.
The Sustainable Food Places Network is a rapidly growing movement of people in towns, cities, boroughs and counties across the UK working to make healthy, sustainable and local food a defining characteristic of where they live.
Through local food partnerships involving local authorities, charities, businesses and community groups, the Network is using good food to tackle some of the biggest social, economic and environmental issues today, food poverty and obesity and the decay of our high streets and the disappearance of family farming to climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and waste.
Brighton and Hove was the first city in the UK to create a citywide food strategy, the first to have food growing written into planning guidelines for new residential developments and the first to require all Council food procurement to meet minimum health and sustainability standards.
Tom Andrews, who leads the development of the programme said; "It’s amazing to present this award to Brighton and Hove, recognising the extraordinary innovation and effort to change attitudes and perceptions about food and create a more sustainable food system.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how important it is that people have healthy diets and can access affordable, healthy and sustainable food no matter who they are or where they live. But the pandemic has also shown just how resilient communities can be when they work together to help those most in need, and nowhere more so than Brighton and Hove.
“In achieving this first-ever Gold Sustainable Food Places Award, Brighton and Hove have shown what is possible in transforming a local food system for the better. Recognising that food is not only at the heart of some of today’s greatest challenges but is also a vital part of the solution, Brighton and Hove Partnership are leading a vanguard of more than 50 pioneering local food partnerships and creating one of the fastest-growing social movements in the UK today.”
The Sustainable Food Places programme helps the Soil Association deliver its vision of a food and farming system which works for climate, nature and health