Partnership working: food, green spaces & the environment

In recent years, the council and its partners have set up many projects around food, green spaces, and environmental stewardship.

Get Oldham Growing, launched in 2014, aimed to build skills within communities, reduce loneliness and isolation among residents and offer support to community-based food businesses. This fits well with the aims of Well North, a partnership between PHE, the University of Manchester and Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, to find new ways of creating healthy communities in the North of England. The resulting collaboration resulted in the Well Oldham project, launched in April 2015. This project aimed to work with local people on growing and cooking and work symbiotically with schools and local businesses to promote learning and an entrepreneurial culture around growing and food.

Going forward, the focus will be on developing the GOG brand and training and volunteering activities, many of which were temporarily suspended or reduced during the Covid 19 lockdown. Opportunities are being considered to access further funding to expand volunteering and training at the hubs as they begin to re-open and volunteers return. The Growing Hubs and community food growing is generally seen as important in helping Oldham move towards greater food security.