Agenda

This Shadow Authority commends to the West Northants Council that they develop an anti-poverty strategy that is worked through all service areas. This will include the recommendations from the Food Poverty working group

passed at the NBC Cabinet meeting.

The strategy will seek to ameliorate the poverty experienced by residents of West Northants. It will seek to support people out of poverty. It will seek to prevent the slide into poverty. Crucial to this will be the development of the authority as a Living Wage Foundation Living Wage Authority, including Living Wage Foundation accreditation.

Also crucial to this will be access to benefits and debt advice. In the recent past this service has levered in an additional £7 million for Northamptonshire residents. All service heads will be required to produce an anti-poverty strategy for their area of work, to be incorporated into an authority wide strategy, and reported on annually.

The Council resolves to:

1. Set up a working group within the council to develop further understanding of the council’s role around food supply, resilience and insecurity. This will include, but is not limited to:

(i) ensuring all children entitled to them, receive food vouchers in school holidays, and have their families receive them in a timely manner.

(ii) supporting the development of a local Food Partnership using the Sustainable Food Places approach to strengthen food resilience in the authority; and

(iii) developing a food resilience strategy and food action plan for West Northamptonshire

2. Ask Scrutiny to map the extent of food insecurity in West Northamptonshire.

3. Continue to work with Northampton MPs to encourage Government to:

(i) Support our local economy and local food production and suppliers to protect workers jobs so that food supplies are sustained

throughout the pandemic;

(ii) Ensure resilience of our food supply chains.

(iii) Support food-based initiatives that reduce health inequalities and food insecurity.

(iv) Commit to legislate the existing commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals to end hunger by 2030;

(v) Commit funding in the next spending review for the five Sustain policies to protect children's health and increase access to nutritious food that is culturally appropriate within the National Food Strategy;

(vi) Increase Universal Credit so people can buy enough food.