Grow, Share, Cook – Plymouth City Council

• Lead Member Plymouth City Council
• Year 2020 - 2021
• Categories Community

The Plymouth Fairness Commission report published in 2014 spent a year of listening to Plymouth citizens to find out what they thought was unfair about the city. Listening told us that citizens were tired of so-called consultations which were anything but. Many said that decisions affecting their communities were imposed from outside, while their concerns about important aspects of their communities were ignored. The Fairness Commission agreed that it was time to try a new way of putting communities back in the driving seat. Access to healthy affordable food was one of the things highlighted by the Fairness Commission that citizens said they were concerned about. The Commission found that “many people are not accessing a balanced diet with the majority of convenience food being high in fat and salt” and “There is a need to broaden people’s understanding of food, where it comes from and how to cook it”. Access to affordable healthy food was becoming a growing challenge for sections of Plymouth’s community. Plymouth Foodbank had seen over 8,000 users in a year for the first time and almost 25,000 meals had been given out by the city’s soup run with more women and children using the service than ever before. Things were desperate.

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