By Miles Hadfield
The Co-op Party is calling on local authorities across the UK to appoint ‘food champions’ to tackle food poverty.
It has launched a new online tool, the Food Justice Finder recently, where people can type in their postcode to find out if their council has a food champion and works with a food partnership.
The Party launched its Food Justice Campaign last year to tackle the growing problem of food poverty, worsened by a decade of austerity. This year the problem has been made worse by the Covid-19 crisis, prompting retail co-ops, community businesses and co-operative councils to play leading roles in initiatives to get food to those in need.
Cllr Nick Forbes, Newcastle City Council leader and Labour’s leader on the Labour Local Government Association, said: “Councils have taken extraordinary action to fight food poverty during the pandemic.
“But in the face of an economic downturn that could spell months or years of crisis, we need to support councils to implement long-term systemic change in how we deal with food poverty in our communities.