Barnet Council has officially approved the Barnet Food Plan 2026-2028, a comprehensive strategy aimed at fostering a healthier, fairer, and more sustainable food environment across the borough. The plan, which builds upon the previous Barnet Food Plan (2022-2027), was formally endorsed by the Health and Wellbeing Board on Thursday, March 19, 2026. The refreshed plan extends its delivery period to March 2028, allowing for realistic timelines and thorough evaluation. It is structured around three core pillars: Healthy People, Healthy Places, and Healthy Planet.
Healthy People
Under the 'Healthy People' pillar, key initiatives include improving school food standards, increasing uptake of the Healthy Start scheme, and continuing the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme. Specific improvements for school food standards involve working with the Procurement team for the 2026 renewal of the school food contract to increase nutritional value and sustainability. This will ensure the contract includes Public Health specifications for healthier and sustainable food in schools, covering whole-day food environments, a London Living Wage clause for catering staff and contractors, water-only schools, mandatory School Food Standards training for all catering staff, a sustainability accreditation requirement (e.g., Soil Association Food for Life silver or equivalent), explicit reference to the National School Food Standards and Barnet Public Health's position statement, and a commitment to delivering the London Circular Food Purchasing Commitment (LCFPC). Success will be measured by the contract including these specifications, achieving bronze level of the London Food Purchasing Commitment, and ensuring all schools have at least one meatless day per week. Additionally, the plan aims to increase the representation of faith schools in forums that support school food work and early years settings, with success measured by the number of faith schools joining the Barnet School Food Network. The delivery of Barnet's school food support action plan (2025-2027) will also be monitored.
The plan also emphasizes income maximisation and financial resilience to combat food insecurity, with specific mention of the Burnt Oak Community Pantry and a 'Money Worries' campaign. A significant commitment is for the London Borough of Barnet to become an accredited London Living Wage employer and to encourage other businesses to follow suit.
Healthy Places
The 'Healthy Places' pillar focuses on creating healthier high streets by implementing policies on hot food takeaways and developing a 'Good Food Retail Plan.' Specific policies being considered or developed regarding hot food takeaways include the implementation and monitoring of Local Plan policies for hot food takeaways, and an analysis to explore the association between hot food takeaway density in Barnet and local area-level deprivation. The expected impact on high street health is to create healthier high streets by potentially limiting the density of hot food takeaways, especially in areas with higher deprivation. The analysis of the association between hot food takeaway density and deprivation is expected to be completed and published as a blog. While the Local Plan already restricts new hot food takeaways within 400 metres of a school, it is noted that this policy takes time to show an impact as existing takeaways cannot be closed.
It also seeks to embed food plan principles into neighbourhood health initiatives and improve the visibility and functionality of the Barnet Food Dashboard. The Barnet Food Dashboard will be improved by refreshing the set of indicators to include financial-resilience data. It will also feature a map linking food bank locations with borough-level deprivation data to help target interventions and support planning. The dashboard will be regularly updated and will incorporate data on food-waste recycling and high-street data on food outlets. The aim is to present a comprehensive view of the food system across the three pillars of Healthy People, Healthy Places, and Healthy Planet.
Food growing is to be integrated into planning and development, with efforts to expand community food growing capacity and strengthen food growing in schools.
Healthy Planet
Under the 'Healthy Planet' pillar, the plan prioritizes reducing food waste through household and business recycling, monitoring waste data, and delivering communication campaigns. Specific targets for reducing food waste include marking Food Waste Action Week annually through coordinated council-wide communications, and encouraging VCSEs to apply for relevant grant funding for food waste reduction. The proposed methods for monitoring waste data from households and businesses involve monitoring the collection of household recycling and food waste, and the number and percentage of small business customers signed up to the LBB food waste collection service. The tonnage of household food waste collected will be used as a proxy measure for participation. Additionally, new food waste recycling data will be integrated onto the food dashboard, and data on residual waste, food waste, and recycling trends will be monitored to identify wards with higher levels of avoidable food waste to inform work or pilots on food waste reduction. The Doing Our Bit, Barnet
communications campaign will also be delivered to encourage residents and businesses to recycle food waste weekly and reduce avoidable waste.
It also aims to support sustainable food growing practices and integrate sustainability into food procurement.
Measuring Success
The Barnet Food Plan 2026-2028 will be evaluated using a variety of indicators across its three pillars. For the 'Healthy People' pillar, indicators include the number of faith schools joining the Barnet School Food Network, progress against the School Food Support Plan Action Plan, the number of hubs with at least silver or gold Healthy Early Years London accreditation, referrals to food aid organisations via hubs, Healthy Start card uptake among eligible families, and the number of nutrition activities as part of the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme. For 'Healthy Places', indicators include the publication of Barnet's Good Food Retail Plan
guidance, the number of food businesses in the Barnet Food Partnership (BFP) membership, the number of new developments with space for food growing, and the number of new partnerships between educational settings and community gardens. For 'Healthy Planet', indicators include the tonnage of household food waste collected, the number and percentage of small business customers signed up to the LBB food waste collection service, engagement metrics across campaign channels for the Doing Our Bit, Barnet
communications campaign, and the number of food growing spaces embedding sustainability measures. A refreshed Barnet Food Dashboard will also be developed to monitor key indicators across all three pillars.
Councillor Alison Moore, Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board, noted the importance of these initiatives in addressing health inequalities and the stalled trend in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy across the borough. The full plan can be found in the Food Action Plan 2026-2028.
