BH Green Party line on food - answers to questions

Brighton & Hove Food Partnership Questions

Answered by Brighton & Hove Green Party

Q1 Food waste

Food waste is a huge cost financially and environmentally. Most of the food that ends up in the bin could have been eaten, 22,328 tonnes of food was thrown away by homes in Brighton & Hove in 2009/10. WRAP estimates that avoidable food waste is responsible for 3% of the UK’s GHG emissions. This is equivalent to the emissions from 7 million cars per year.

What will you do to reduce avoidable food waste in the city?

Education is has a key role in avoiding food waste. In the first instance we want to see residents save money on not buying food they won’t eat through encouraging meal-planning and shopping lists. We would also work with retailers in the city to discourage ‘BOGOF’-style offers which encourage people to purchase more products than they will consume. Also we want to ensure that schools food work includes information on good shopping and food budgeting skills.

Secondly, once food has been purchased we want to make sure that residents have the information to be able to cook the right quantities, and keep track of what food is due to go off. Finally, showing residents how they can imaginatively use their leftovers and other ingredients in the fridge will ensure that food gets eaten rather than forgotten about and thrown away.

We will undertake this through ongoing work with the Food Partnership and continuing the excellent Love Food Hate Waste programme. We will support the partnership to deliver skills workshops on cooking and budgeting and will work on ways to promote and ensure access to these in conjunction with other services.

We will make communications channels – such as City News, City Clean and spaces on the waste vehicles fleet - available to raise awareness. We would also look at tying this in to Council Tax bill literature to highlight the cost implications. For instance, the average family with children throws away £680 per year through food waste, which is equivalent to 45% of Band D Council Tax.

The bulk of food waste is from households, but significant quantities also arise from food retailers, restaurants, pubs, cafés and catering. We would look at the possibility of running a promotion aimed at restaurants and their customers. For example this could share good practice on cutting waste between restaurants and de-stigmatise the 'doggy bag' for leftovers.

The Council has a responsibility too, and we will seek to drive down food waste in council services and school catering.

Do you support a separate city-wide food waste collection?

Yes. With the economic and environmental cost of food waste soaring, this significant component of our landfill waste cannot be ignored. We will promote home and community composting for those who have the space, though for many a collection is key. Greens proposed a budget amendment in this year’s budget setting process to set aside money for a food waste collection pilot with a view to introducing a city-wide scheme. It has also been shown that a food waste collection reduces food waste as it makes people more aware of how much they're throwing away.

The food waste collected not only diverts this waste from landfill or incineration, but offers opportunities to help provide energy for the city. Not only can the right processes capture methane from the waste, but this can in turn be used either directly as biogas for heating or burned to generate electricity for the city. There are challenges in identifying the right sites for this infrastructure, but we will nevertheless seek to do more work on this issue.

Q2 Avoiding clone town Brighton & Hove

Brighton & Hove’s independent shops and restaurants are an intrinsic part of the city’s attraction for residents and visitors alike.

What will you do to support local retailers and other outlets in the face of the increasing dominance of supermarkets on the high street and out of town?

Local independent shops are key to helping make Brighton unique and attractive to many of our visitors. They’re also vital to the local economy and reduce the need for people to travel to buy goods. The city already has a large number of supermarkets for the area it covers – 56 at the last count, with more proposed to open.

We will lobby national government to provide specific planning powers to allow local authorities to protect distinct and unique shopping areas, including: small shops to become their own use class, defining small shops as being below a certain ground floor space threshold and require planning permission for merging two small shops together. We will explore what new possibilities there are under the Localism Bill, particularly regarding discretion over business rates.

We will encourage the city’s larger employers (including the Council itself) to ‘buy local’ from smaller and independent businesses. We also want to see full consultation between developers and residents when proposals come forward to build a new supermarket – which often hasn’t been the case in recent years. We will also take swift and firm action against developers who flout regulations.

The Council is landlord in a significant part of the city. We must ensure that the units we rent out are as affordable as possible for our local independent shops. We will work to ensure that expansions in retail floorspace will be affordable and accessible for local independent retailers, and that this will be incorporated into the Core Strategy.

Q3 Land for food growing

There is an increasing demand from residents for opportunities to grow their own food. Allotment waiting lists are long and there are more communities than ever looking to set up food growing projects.

What will you do to encourage the use of vacant land in the city for food growing?

Many city centre spaces have been left to fall into dereliction while developers decide what to do with them. There are also a number of small sites that may be unsuitable for development, but could be used productively in growing food for local people. Greens will seek to identify such spaces and work with landowners to encourage temporary or permanent community use for urban food growing.

We will continue to pursue half-plots on existing sites for people who would prefer smaller allotments, and look to secure new allotment spaces through planning gain. We will also build on our work integrating food growing into the Core Strategy by protecting space for this purpose. We will also support the Partnership to continue delivering projects such as 'grow your neighbour's own'’.

We support the work that has been done by Harvest to map underused land that is suitable for food growing. Where it is Council land, we will support the Partnership to work with local residents to explore new growing opportunities as has been happening on the Albion Hill estate in Queen’s Park.

How will you encourage landowners, including the Council, to use meanwhile leases?

Meanwhile leases are an excellent way to limit the problems caused by empty properties, offices and shops, to prevent high street decline, and to ensure that precious space can be put to good use.

We support the use of meanwhile leases for sites such as the Lewes Road Community Garden and The Mound, and encourage the use of containers and raised beds to help to get round this sites that may not be immediately suitable for food production.

The council should play a facilitating role in supporting communities that want to arrange temporary use of empty space, and ensuring take-up of meanwhile leases through briefings and information sharing via partner organisations and business forums such as the LSP and Chamber of Commerce.

Q4 Urban Agriculture

Do you support the development of a community farm for Brighton & Hove to grow food for the city and provide a space for learning?

The success of the demonstration garden in Preston Park shows that, in consultation with local communities, there is an appetite for public space being set aside for food-growing. A community farm would be a fantastic way in which residents can be involved in a city community project, learn about how food arrives on their plate and reduce food miles.

We will look to identify suitable growing spaces within the city. The city's downland portfolio offers some opportunities, although there are significant constraints on the renegotiation of the leases on these pieces of land.

We would particularly look at Stanmer Park, where there are already a number of community-led growing projects, as well as the possibility of tying a community farm at this location into new 'gateway' facilities for the South Downs National Park.

Q5 Sustainable local food production

How will you encourage sustainable use of the Council’s owned farmland?

The agricultural process places demands on water supply, nutrients and topsoil. We will on Council-owned farmland encourage the growth of organic food to minimise harmful effects on the local environment, and mixed farming practises to ensure that food production coexists with local wildlife.

The council-owned farmland contributes an important sum (in rents) to support the city’s services. A difficulty arises around how we can support more sustainable agriculture without creating budgetary pressure on other services areas.

Also the Downland portfolio also has a number of other elements which also need to be balanced, including biodiversity and recreational access among others.

We will explore these issues with our partners and residents to find a way to improve the sustainability of Council-owned farmland..

What will you do to enable more food produced from within a 50 mile radius of Brighton & Hove to be processed and then sold in the city?

The Council’s own procurement process is a key way in which the Council can support locally-sourced food. Greens have been making the case that Council procurement practices should ensure providers comply with our sustainability aspirations.

By choosing to work with partners who purchase local food, we not only support these local farmers and businesses, but set the standard for other large organisations in the city. We will also run a proactive ‘buy local’ campaign encouraging these organisations to use local food sources.

We also need the right industrial units and the right information and support to encourage processors to set up within or near the city. The Green-led scrutiny report on environmental industries showed the requirements needed to help these businesses flourish, for example sector networks.

We would look at having a city conference to get organisations networking, and form ideas on how best to support local food growing and processing. We will also continue to support food festival and work on marketing our local food as part of our tourism offer.

Q6 Good food for the most vulnerable in our society

Brighton & Hove City Council commissions and provides services for thousands of children and vulnerable adults every year.

Will you ensure that all staff working in these areas (including for example care homes, nurseries, day centres and hostels) are trained on the impact that good nutrition has on mental and physical health?

The link between diet and health is crucial, particularly when catering for young or vulnerable people. This is even more important with local authorities’ new public health duty.

Greens will ensure that food provided in schools is nutritious, healthy and tasty and work towards Gold ‘Food for Life’ standards. Similarly, we will look to ensure that food provided by our care services meet high health and sustainability standards through procurement. Where we don’t directly procure a service, we will also look to work with our partners by running awards or competitions to highlight best practice.

Will you ensure that all meals provided by these services are healthy and sustainable?

Where we can do so through procurement contracts we will always push to provide the healthiest and most sustainable meals we can for our residents.

Q7 Reducing health inequalities

Diet related ill health is a major contributor to the considerable problem of health inequalities in the city.

Will you pledge to ensure that healthy eating programmes receive adequate funding now that the City Council will be responsible for public health?

Public health is a key priority and healthy eating is an important component of it. Greens want to see a properly-funded and holistic public health approach. However with the savage Conservative-Liberal Democrat cuts to local government grants over the next few years, it’s impossible to guarantee that local authorities will be able to deliver all the services they would like to. Nationally we are also deeply concerned that policies on food, drink and health have been written or watered down by large food companies rather than by health professionals.

Nevertheless, Greens would seek to maintain the partnership work done by BHFP and work with the PCT (or GP consortia, should they supersede PCTs) in encouraging good diets, particularly from a younger age in schools. It’s also important to tie in healthy eating with other areas such as employment, housing, and planning to help reduce obesogenic lifestyles.

Q8 Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions

Meat and dairy products account for just under a third of nutritional intake in the UK, but account for nearly twice that share of greenhouse gas emissions. Worldwide deforestation is being driven by demand for beef and the land to grow grains for animal feed.

Would you support initiatives to encourage people to eat less meat as part of a sustainable lifestyle?

Reducing meat consumption can be achieved through education and outreach . We would look to promote meat-free recipes, include the topic in food education in schools, and work with retailers and local restaurants.

We believe that the Council should lead from the front by adopting ‘meat free Mondays’ and other schemes in its own catering, and specifying a meat-free day in school meals contracts.

We want to create greater opportunities for people to experience the possibilities available to them, to get the skills for how to create meat free meals, and exploit some unrivalled local advantages such as our great vegetarian food outlets.