Building Civil Food Resilience across the SFP network

Over the second half of 2025 a collection of SFPs* gathered together online for a monthly meeting to discuss their emerging Civil Food Resilience work.

 

Several of these Partnerships were funded by a Sustain grant, while others simply joined voluntarily out of interest and the direction of their own work.

 

Since early 2025 there has been a big shift in SFP work towards Civil Food Resilience, with due credit to Professor Tim Lang’s report for the National Preparedness Commission, titled ‘From Just in Time, to Just in Case’ (Lang et al, 2025). This report emphasised not only the fragility of the UK’s food system in relation to crisis events and their impact on citizens but set out a detailed plan to begin addressing it. The Sustainable Food Places and its membership of 123 Food Partnerships (and growing) was recognised in the report as having a crucial role in delivering on what the National Food Strategy has referred to as “place-based interventions”, particularly in relation to working alongside Local Resilience Forums (LRFs).

 

As food partnership coordinators and teams, we know our context: our communities, our stakeholder networks, local food businesses, schools, history and landscapes. In many ways, our work is the closest thing remaining to the County Agricultural Offices that were responsible for coordination food production and distribution during war time.

 

Not surprisingly, the government response to new research (no matter how sobering) is slow. It is a juggernaut that cannot pivot quickly and respond beyond a one-size-fits-all approach. Civil Food Resilience has yet to be revealed by government to its various relevant departments or to councils. 

 

So when faced with the urgency of food system polycrisis, and knowing its impacts intimately from daily boots on the ground work, this small cohort of SFPs took the initiative to begin developing their own CFR approaches.

 

The ‘Just in Case’ report offered a number of ways to approach the food resilience gap and has provided a valuable tool, not only to guide actions but also as a lever to use when communicating with Local Authorities and LRFs to flag our food crisis planning blind-spot. And true to form, no two SFPs approached the problem in exactly the same way.

 

Some SFPs have started by ‘heat mapping’ their networks and local activity to find initiatives or groups that would be receptive to CFR capacity building and engagement. Others have gone directly to their Local Authorities and LRFs to tackle this gap head on - some are ready to have the conversation, and others aren’t there yet. This has resulted in some creative thinking for SFPs to create work arounds, like ‘shadow LRFs’ with network members, or conversations and simulations with community groups and Town and Parish Councils.

 

As an outcome of the series of conversations we had over the course of 2025, a broader coordinator webinar offered an opportunity to present the many approaches currently being taken by SFPs across the UK.

 

From those who joined, there was a strong sense of an existing national patchwork of practice, with areas at different stages of engagement with CFR. The session focused on what place-based food resilience should look like in practice and how we can continue to learn from one another as SFPs, and be supported by the Sustainable Food Places team. You can read the summary of the webinar here).

 

Another output from the cohort conversations was a report outlining the various approaches being taken by SFPs, including case studies and vignettes. This report also includes information on how SFPs can get started, the roles of different stakeholders, and actions to build CFR capacity.

 

So much of the work we have been doing has been informed by experiencing, responding to and reflecting on recent crises, like the Pandemic, food system impacts from Brexit, food retail hacking, software disruptions and flooding events. These show us that crisis is not some far-flung fear factor – it’s a regular occurrence and something that SFPs are able to link to systems-failures and real world impacts at the human level. A key part of our role is to communicate that and use our expertise to influence, plan for and navigate the challenges.

 

Our place-based knowledge and the networks of trust that we have built up are our superpowers. We have the ability to be nimble and responsive when crisis hits, in ways that we know work best for our areas.

 

Coordinating Food Resilience Webinar: A Sustainable Food Places webinar (28.01.2026): 

This webinar captures case studies from eight Sustainable Food Places members that are implementing diverse approaches to civil food resilience, based on local need, stakeholders and future scenario planning. https://youtu.be/hGd8k94-0VU

 

 

*Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Brighton and Hove, Monmouthshire, Dyfed Powys, Bristol, Plymouth, Birmingham and Dumfries and Galloway