A presentation about the food economy in Kirklees by Dr John Lever from the Centre for Sustainable and Resilient Communities at the University of Huddersfield. Part of the Future of Local Food in Kirklees event, February 2016. Visit www.foodkirklees.org.uk to find out more.

2. Context
• Community food enterprises have gained greater
prominence alongside the emergence of Urban Food
Strategies and Food Policy Councils.
• Following Toronto and New York, cities across the UK
are reconfiguring food policies around a range of issues
• This is the context in which this research took place!

3.  Links with Climate Action Plans, Regional
Transportation Plans and Sustainability
Strategies – Los Angeles, Newquay
An “Integrated, cross-sectoral approach to
food policy” – Brighton and Hove

4. Aim of the research
To provide evidence of how the current Kirklees
food system contributes to the aim of making local
people and the economy more resilient.
There were 3 main objectives:
1. To explore the potential impact of local food on
economic development
2. To examine possible frameworks for an
independent food partnership in Kirklees
3. To develop awareness and promote the
significance of these issues

6. 1. Bring people together in communities:
“I think one spin off from this is people have come along who’ve never
really been involved in growing anything in the past…they’re also going
back into their own gardens, sometimes with neighbours and… doing
things there as well.”
2. Providing health services/ benefits to local people
“Our therapeutic gardening with adults, it makes a big difference to
people, they really gain socially as well as the skills… it seems to
take people back to what they used to do, back doing physical
things and kids love it, the parents love it.”
3. The Green Valley Grocer acts as a ‘HUB’ for the local
community, delivering food for older people and providing a
range of non-food community services.
Social benefits

7. Practices mitigating climate change impacts
1. Planting trees and orchards
2. Managing land more effectively
3. Conservation, wildlife and biodiversity
4. Sustainable livestock production
Environmental benefits

8. Economic benefits?
 Some CFEs raise equity from within the local
community, pay dividends & keep money
circulating in the local economy.
 Economies of scale often make it difficult to move
forward and there are commercial challenges.
 Support has also been withdrawn for local farmers
markets and food festivals, which are now overly
expensive for local food businesses.
“We do a lot less farmers markets now than what we used to; we
used to do quite a lot of food festivals, we haven’t done any this
year… they’re charging too much money for the rent and we’re not
getting the takings that we were.”

9. Tensions?
• Kirklees Council is currently working to join-up and
make links between the Joint Health & Well Being
Strategy and the Kirklees Economic Strategy
• There is big tension here – evident in the Kirklees
Local Plan – between economic development and
local community development:
“That’s one of the things about this view of land for jobs and homes,
land’s about more than that, and that’s one of the things that
worries me a lot. In terms of the health and well-being strategy,
food’s right up there as… really important, but it’s got to be there in
the economic side as well and reflected in your planning policy.”
• The need for better planning, policy and support was
evident throughout the research

10. What’s to be gained from planning a more
a resilient local food economy?
“So growing food is one outcome, the food value, but you’ve
also got the people who are employed on the land, so you’ve
got local economic development potential… you’ve also got
the social aspect of getting people with perhaps mental health
issues onto the land, and then you’ve got things like managing
land better… So you’ve got win, win, win.”

11. Improving the local food system
through collaboration?

12. Expanding the scope of local food?

13. The ‘limits’ of local supply chains?
• Prominent local UK food partnership member
“I think local food is a bit of a red herring, I don’t say this too loudly
a lot of the time because obviously it’s quite emotive, but because
the UK is small I think we should be thinking much more about a
sustainable UK supply chain and how best that serves the country”
• Local Kirklees Councilor
“The thing is local definition should be the closest you can get it fresh…
Not processed, stored, so you have to redefine what local is, can we get it
closer, so it’s that procurement process, so the best value.”
• Local Food Entrepreneur
‘[S]mall producers, if they know they are getting a fixed volume sale and
they know what they are getting, they can work their margins. They might
not be able to get high margins but… if I am getting 5-10% margins and
I’m going to sell every single week and I know it is guaranteed… I’d bite
your hand off.’

14. • Many of these issues are being addressed through the FFLP
• Schools are encouraged to act as food HUBs, growing and
using more organic and fair trade food, for example!
• Kirklees Council Public Health has been commissioned to
deliver the programme to all schools in the borough
• And Kirklees Catering achieved the FFLP silver award in 2014
and 2015 for its work on school meals
• There are almost 100 schools enrolled, with over 50 awards –
we are trying to get the University signed up!
• What this indicated was that there is already a thriving system
of food HUBS – schools, shops, farms and farm shops – is
already in place that can help Kirklees to move forward!
Moving forward…

15. A central Kirklees food hub?
It is difficult to envisage Kirklees
developing a food hub on the
same scale as North Yorkshire
But some local food artisans have
even considered moving north to
make use of the support on offer:
“We’ve actually even considered
moving… up to Thirsk just so we can
make use of the facilities.”
A food HUB is an organizational approach to gathering,
distributing and marketing food – they can be public, private, coop,
producer and/or wholesaler led.

16. • Prominent members of UK food partnerships
thought a Kirklees food HUB was a good way of
moving forward.
• However, success was seen to be dependent on
an effective independent food partnership
setting the overall strategy.
• There was great support for this across Kirklees!
• However, the key to moving forward effectively
was seen to revolve around getting the right
people involved at the outset!
Food hub + Independent Food Partnership

17. Independence from who?
“If you’re bringing diverse sectors of the food system
together… from your producers through to your public
sector people who are working on food-related issues
through to third sector, and perhaps want to take
individual residents and community members with you as
well, it’s important that you are not too associated with
local government or even with the community sector”

18. So what would an
Independent Food Partnership
in Kirklees look like?

19. The Brighton & Hove Food Partnership
• A not-for-profit limited company independent of the
local authority and local communities
• A board of directors and 3000 members from various
organisations, NGOs and communities
• The membership is consulted on any work undertaken,
which feeds into work priorities and programmes.
• Projects are developed with partners from the local
authority, community groups and mental health
organisations.
• Members drive the organisation and are elected onto
the board, with service level delivery taking place in
partnership with public health.

20. Critical factors in Brighton
 Finding funding that enabled a chief
executive with appropriate leadership
skills and other staff members to be
employed was critical getting the
partnership off the ground!
 The partnership recently convinced the
local authority to commit to minimum
buying standards for all food!
 They are now working to ensure that
local supply chains can deliver this on a
regular basis!

21. Recommendations
1. Provide more support for the community food sector in
Kirklees
1. Initiative better partnership working and collaboration across
all sectors in West Yorkshire
1. Link the local food system with local supply chains to
enhance local sourcing and procurement
2. Initiative better planning and policy to link the food system
to population needs across different areas of service delivery
more effectively
3. Develop a local food partnership and food hub infrastructure
to drive the food strategy to the next level.
Thank you for listening!