Almost £10 million will be provided to 45 local authorities in England to improve access to healthy and affordable food, helping families and communities get the room to breathe they need on the cost of living.

The new funding is being provided to help areas with the greatest levels of deprivation and childhood obesity.

The Good Food Neighbourhoods funding could support initiatives such as community food shops, mobile greengrocers, lunch clubs, community kitchens, and cooking and nutrition programmes, as well as helping local authorities strengthen their capacity to plan for and meet local food needs.

The programme strongly aligns with the work Wolverhampton is already doing through its Financial Wellbeing Strategy and its ambitious agenda to support children to grow healthily and maintain a healthy weight.

The city’s aim is to build financial resilience across neighbourhoods, reduce poverty, improve access to affordable healthy food, strengthen community capacity, and support residents to move from crisis towards long-term independence.

The council already has an established food programme called Pocket to Plate with a network of community shops across the city, community chefs teaching cooking skills, online weekly recipes, and a community kitchen.

Only this week it was highlighted how Gatis Community Space - Wolves Waste Not - already saves tonnes of food going to waste each month by collecting from supermarkets and distributing at community markets.

The extra funding will ensure the council and its partners can continue to deliver projects like this and increase sustainable improvements in food access, health outcomes, and community resilience for residents most affected by financial hardship.

It will include reducing poverty through increased access to affordable healthy food and developing a city-wide Good Food Network through Pocket to Plate to ensure no household experiences food insecurity. It will also build further on current work to tackle childhood obesity.

Leader of the council, Councillor Stephen Simkins welcomed the funding and said it would really help build on the great work done to date.

‘We have already established many projects with our partners to help our residents access good quality food at low prices from community shops and community markets to community chefs, who teach people how to make the most of food to feed their families well.

‘This extra funding will ensure we can continue that great work, delivering sustainable improvements to access food, health outcomes and resilience for residents most affected by financial hardship.

‘We’re also pursuing an ambitious and proactive agenda to support all our children to grow healthily and maintain a healthy weight.

‘We know achieving a healthy weight is shaped by much more than individual choices. Our approach brings partners together to address the wider factors that influence what children and families eat, how active they are and the environments in which they live, learn and grow.

‘Good Food Neighbourhoods provides an exciting opportunity to build on this approach and make affordable, nutritious food more accessible and the healthier choice easier for families.’

The investment comes as the government acts to give people more room to breathe by improving access to affordable food, while delivering power to communities.

Anyone struggling financially can see full support on offer by visiting our cost-of-living webpages – Cost of Living Support | City Of Wolverhampton Council