For Year 5, the Thrive Plymouth Planning Group (led by Public Health) is working in partnership with Food Plymouth who act as a ‘central connecting platform’ for all things food-related in the city. Food Plymouth’s mission is to promote local, healthy, sustainable and affordable food as a driver for positive change. Recognising our strengths and some of the challenges we have in the city, as well as the need to address poverty and social isolation, the theme for Year 5 is ‘People Connecting Through Food’. We launched this on 16th October 2018 to coincide with World Food Day which is focused on tackling global hunger.
The focus for Year 5 will be supporting Plymouth to achieve the Sustainable Food Cities (SFC) Silver Award. The city currently has Bronze status and if successful would be only one of four local authorities in the country to achieve Silver, along with Bristol, Brighton and Hove, and the Greater London Authority and London Food Board. This award is designed to recognise and celebrate the success of places taking a joined up, holistic approach to food and that are achieving significant positive change on a range of key food issues. In order to achieve this, Food Plymouth, with support from across the Council and the Thrive Plymouth Planning Group, have developed an action plan for the city based on the following SFC themes:
- Promoting healthy and sustainable food to the public
- Tackling food poverty, diet-related ill health and access to affordable healthy food
- Building community food knowledge, skills, resources and projects
- Promoting a vibrant and diverse sustainable food economy
- Transforming catering and food procurement
- Reducing waste and the ecological footprint of the food system
Sustainable Food Cities: Making the case for a place-based approach to healthy and sustainable food
