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.
