Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire: Improving food security at a local level

Spanning a range of local areas and involving three councils, this SPHL project is looking at the issue of food security. Bristol City Council, North Somerset Council and South Gloucestershire Council are working together to explore the issues and drivers causing food insecurity in seven areas of higher need.  

They include three places in Bristol (Knowle West, Lawrence Hill and Lawrence Weston); two in North Somerset (Weston Central and Weston South); and two in South Gloucestershire (Patchway Coniston, and Charlton and Cribbs).  

The project aims to build on community strengths and resources to develop sustainable solutions to local food insecurity, focusing on complex systems change. Funding will be available in each area for lead community organisations to set up community project groups and trial different initiatives. The results will aim to demonstrate which solutions and approaches are transferable to other places. 

Progress on the BNSSG project has gathered momentum since November 2022, when two part-time project workers were appointed through Bristol City Council: Clare Daley, working with Bristol, and Laura Flanagan, working with North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.  

Their first task was to hold introductory meetings with staff in the three councils, key stakeholders, and across the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector in each of the areas. An over-arching project plan was developed and processes put in place to mobilise the project.  

The next step is to engage lead community organisations in each area. These lead organisations will bring local project teams together and take the practical work forward. While each council is taking a slightly different approach, an ‘expression of interest’ process, developed from Bristol City Council, is encouraging a collaborative approach with organisations. 

The learning so far from BNSSG has a focus on process and includes the following learning points.  

Different organisations work in different ways      

Bringing together a broad range of partners from the VCSE, health and other sectors can bring challenges, as each will have a different way of working. This has to be carefully managed. Some of the local areas already had established food networks or alliances in place; others did not. The three councils involved are very different in terms of partnerships, processes and politics.  

While navigating these different relationships has added to the initial challenge, it does provide scope to make a greater long-term impact. Clare said:

I think one of the lasting legacies will be bringing people together and building relationships.”

For example, there is a desire in some areas to not only involve those organisations already working on food insecurity, but to bring in relevant new players – such as the business and education sectors.  

A steering group of staff from the three councils meets at least once every fortnight. Laura said that this brings a very positive dynamic to the work.

“There are lots of advantages to working across the three councils because everybody brings different ideas, expertise, background and processes that we can share. Hopefully we will see lots more of that as we go along.”  

Building trust within local communities is key  

The BNSSG team learnt early on of the importance of being mindful and careful when launching a project that involves organisations already working on-the-ground in communities.  

Local organisations need to be assured that the project will bring additional benefit, aiming to complement and add resource and benefit to the positive work that is already happening. Building this trust takes time – particularly in a project like this, which spans several neighbourhoods. Laura Flanagan said:

For the wider team that has been an important piece of learning. Communities don’t want people coming in for a year then leaving it all behind when the funding ends. We have learnt to be open from the outset. We are clear about what this project is, and what it is not.”  

To help with this process, the project workers have held meetings with stakeholders to outline the aims of the work and show how people can get involved. They attend local meetings such as food alliances and food networks where these are in place. This partnership work will be critical to the end result.



Clare said: “It takes time to establish those relationships but you end up with a much better result which everyone has bought into. As a result, we will hopefully see some really good learnings from giving out the project grants.”  

The timeframes also have to suit each place. Laura said: “We would do more damage than good by forcing a process into a timeframe that just isn’t going to work for that local area. So we are having to flex the approach and listen to what community organisations tell us about how things work locally.”  

Solutions must be sustainable and lessons transferable 

A total of £100,000 grant funding will be split between the different areas for on-the-ground community initiatives. Funding some place-based initiatives in this way will not change complex systems overnight, so the food security approaches that are selected for grant funding must be sustainable. One way to achieve this is to harness existing community assets, connecting and building on what is already taking place.  

Within the context of the cost of living crisis, one challenge facing the team is to ensure that people do not assume that this project is about a ‘crisis response’. It is about the underlying root causes in those areas or the issues that are making food insecurity worse.   

Engaging lead organisations in each area will help to keep the focus on longer term sustainability. That will help to ensure that the project does not result in a series of ‘quick fixes’ that may work in one neighbourhood but are not transferable to others.  

The next stage is to appoint the lead organisation for each area, get grant agreements in place, and work in partnership to form the local project planning teams (likely to include community organisations, local volunteers and residents with an interest in food issues).  

The initial work to understand and map out the systems determining food insecurity in the project areas was done during COVID-19, so the team plans to revisit and revise this mapping work. They are also planning work to identify the wide range of local stakeholders who may have a role to play in improving food security, to look at the potential reach of the SPHL project.  

With this updated system mapping and broader understanding of who can influence different parts of it, the team will then review the original ‘Theory of change’ for the project. This sets the theory for how planned work will achieve the desired change, and will inform the development of appropriate methods of monitoring and evaluation.    

Each project planning team will develop a food security action plan for their area, and will then decide on which local initiatives should receive funding. There will be around a year for these initiatives to grow and develop, providing the SPHL team with an opportunity to see how they impact on food security.  

One of the legacies of the BNSSG project is that the learning will be shared across all three councils directly involved, as well as more widely, with solutions embedded into local strategy wherever possible. 

For further information contact Laura: [email protected] or Clare: [email protected] – Community Health Development Officers (Food Equality).