Hammersmith and Fulham Council is aiming to significantly reduce food insecurity in the borough by 2030 with a new comprehensive food plan. The council will monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the plan during annual reviews.

The H&F Food Plan 2025-2030, a five-year strategy developed in collaboration with the H&F Food for All Partnership, was discussed at the Health and Adult Social Care Policy and Accountability Committee meeting on Tuesday, 8 July 2025. The plan builds upon the previous H&F Food Matters: Action Plan 2019-2024 and sets out a framework to tackle the root causes of food insecurity, promote sustainable food systems, and improve access to nutritious food for all residents. Local businesses also have a responsibility to improving access to healthy affordable food and supporting their employees and community.

The plan focuses on four key priorities:

  • Food Security: Ensuring no one goes hungry or is malnourished. The delivery plan will be a live document that includes existing work, ongoing projects, and goals that can progress with resources. It will specify the leads and partners in charge of each action and will be updated using a RAG rating system by the leaders of those actions. Time frames and key performance indicators will be set for each activity. Each action will have a performance measure for clear reporting.
  • Healthy Eating: Enabling everyone to eat healthily.
  • Connecting Communities: Preventing social isolation around food.
  • Sustainable Food Systems: Enabling environmentally conscious eating. This includes understanding the impact of food, reducing waste, making better use of surplus food, promoting sustainable eating, and encouraging healthier diets.

Diagram illustrating the 'Food Ladders' concept for community food provision and building resilient food security, with rungs representing 'Catching,' 'Capability Building,' and 'Transformation.'
Diagram illustrating the 'Food Ladders' concept for community food provision and building resilient food security, with rungs representing 'Catching,' 'Capability Building,' and 'Transformation.'Source: Health and Adult Social Care Policy and Accountability Committee papers, 8 July 2025

The plan also incorporates the 'Food Ladders' approach, which focuses on three rungs:

  1. Catching: Providing emergency crisis support.
  2. Capability Building: Supporting access to affordable food.
  3. Community-led Initiatives: Empowering communities through self-organised projects. Examples include developing a social enterprise based on community cooking knowledge that provides employment, cooperative food growing and food procurement that increases the local availability of good food.

According to the Public Reports Pack, in March 2025, Hammersmith and Fulham received a leadership and most improved Council Award at the Good Food Local report launch at London City Hall. The awards are part of the annual Sustain London report, backed by the Greater London Authority and Trust for London, which assesses each borough's food partnerships and efforts to tackle food insecurity.

The Equality Impact Analysis concluded that the plan would have positive consequences and no direct negative implications for groups who share protected characteristics as listed under the 2010 Equality Act. Similarly, the Climate Implications Toolkit concluded that the plan would have no direct negative implications for the climate.