Tackling Poverty in Leicester

Leicester City Council has developed a comprehensive Food Plan 2021-26 which sets out actions across six areas, one of which is tackling food poverty. The food poverty priority is addressed by the Feeding Leicester steering group chaired by Liz Kendall MP, alongside the organisations delivering services through the Emergency Food Partnership.

Key themes relating to food poverty are:

• supporting people in crisis
• low cost food for vulnerable groups
• protecting people from hunger
• building food security

Actions have been developed under each of these areas, with the Feeding Leicester group providing oversight, challenge and support.

Needs

When it comes to food and clothing, the needs in Leicester are split between those in crisis who need access immediately, and those who struggle generally and need longer term, low-cost solutions.

It’s all well and good for us to signpost but families don’t want to take it up because they’re worried about the consequences.

Hunger

The Emergency Food Network in the city is strong. It is generally well-coordinated and able to access food to stock foodbanks. The holiday hunger programme has been very successful and this should be supported and extended where possible.

The kids who need food are cautious. They don’t open up because they’re afraid.

Awareness

The take up of Healthy Start vouchers and free school meals is not as high as it could be, so we need to promote through schools, childcare settings and health venues.

Getting referrals to foodbanks for families is hard – they know they have to go to the customer service desk in front of everyone.

Hygiene

Period poverty and access to sanitary products is a concern.

Nutrition

It’s vital to encourage food growing and teach cooking skills to improve nutrition, but when access to any food is a struggle, sometimes the nutritional value comes as a secondary priority.

Re-use

Various schemes are in place across the country offering low cost food, often surplus from the food industry. We should explore these different models of social supermarkets and pay-as-you-wish schemes to be developed across the public and community sectors. Clothing recycling schemes were supported, particularly the idea of a school uniform swap shop that has been successful in other areas.

Everyone should have access to affordable, nutritious food and clothing that meets their needs.

The council helps secure this by:

• supporting the voluntary sector to meet the need for emergency food across all neighbourhoods of the city when people are in crisis
• working to tackle holiday hunger through supporting a range of local projects and delivering the Holiday Activities and Food programme for children receiving free school meals
• promoting and working to increase the take up of healthy start and free school meals by eligible families
• supporting low-cost food initiatives such as company shop, community shop and social supermarket models to distribute surplus food and reduce waste
• convening and working with the Feeding Leicester partnership of organisations to lobby government to make changes to funding systems and food-related provision
• encouraging residents to improve their knowledge and skills around food growing (in gardens, allotments and community plots)
• encouraging residents to improve their cooking skills and nutritional knowledge through ‘cook and eat’ sessions delivered in Children, Young People and Family Centres
• minimising food poverty overall by implementing the actions set out in Leicester’s food plan
• providing schools with information about the free resources available to reduce period poverty
• offer a free water bottle refill service through various buildings and businesses across the city

In addition, the council intends to:

• support schemes that encourage passing on usable clothing, including school uniform items
• seed fund a project to reuse school uniform items around the city
• offer free sanitary products in council buildings to support those experiencing period poverty

There is very little national information about food poverty to make any useful comparisons. Recognising this, the Government plans to incorporate a national index of food insecurity into an annual survey monitoring household incomes and living standards.

We have used local data, as well as information from surveys and our conversations with people.

The health and well-being survey carried out by public health in 2018 combined food and fuel poverty, and showed these areas were most affected:

Areas of the city more affected by fuel and food poverty include Eyres Monsell, Mowmacre Hill and Stocking Farm, Saffron, and West End.

Some groups are significantly more likely to be experiencing difficulties paying for fuel or food:

Groups experiencing difficulties	Percentage
45-54 year olds	17%
Off work because of sickness/disability	41%
Long-term limiting condition	25%
Looking after the home	22%
Social renters	18%
Private renters	17%
Living with children under 16	13%

The only other local data found surrounding food poverty is reported from the Public Health survey of children and young people from 2016. They answered questions about their diet in general such as how many portions of fruit and vegetables they consumed, along with home cooked meals and takeaways. Worryingly, one in six children said that they had nothing to eat or drink before lessons and one in five children worried ‘quite a lot’ about having enough to eat. Children were significantly less likely to have home-cooked food ‘on most days’ if they lived in the most deprived areas of the city (lowest quintile), or in the free school meals or Poor Wellbeing groups.

Foodbanks

A survey at food banks in 2019 showed that three out of four people (73%) had used the food bank previously in the last month, showing that most rely on food bank provision. One in ten attended because of an unexpected incident. Nearly half (43%) received food that would benefit at least one child. About half (47%) were taking food for themselves only.

Healthy Start

Healthy Start is a government scheme which provides pregnant women and parents/carers of children up to 4 years on a low-income access to fruit, vegetables, pulses, milk and free vitamins. From May 2022, the Healthy Start paper vouchers have been replaced with a pre-paid card. Instead of receiving paper vouchers in the post every month, beneficiaries will now have a pre-paid card which is topped up once a month with their Healthy Start item allowance. This is £34 for 4 weeks for children under 1 years and £17 for 4 weeks for pregnant women and children over 1 and under 4 years. The card can be used in any shops/markets/food outlets accepting Mastercard with certain merchant codes.

 

Leicester’s uptake of the new digitalised Healthy Start scheme is estimated at 74% (March 2022) in line with the England average. However, this means that around 2000 families are missing out on a total of  more than £18,683 each month.

Free school meals

This map shows areas with the highest update of free school meals. It is important to note that while we can make some assumptions from this data, we also know that many other children are eligible for free school meals but they or their parents choose not to take them up.