SFP's Gold Cohort: Worth its Weight

What even is a Gold Award?!

The Sustainable Food Places Award framework spans Bronze, Silver and Gold, with each tier reflecting increasing depth and reach of food systems work.  Gold is rare by design: only six places hold it.  At present, all are non-Local Authority led partnerships, most structured as Community Interest Companies, and virtually all have been doing sustained place-based food work for a decade or more.  These places – Aberdeen, Brighton & Hove, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff and Middlesbrough - are demonstrating what long-term systems change looks like in practice.  Through their food partnerships, they are building the connective tissue that sustains real world change for the localities.

What distinguishes Gold is not simply the breadth of activity across SFP's six themes, though that matters. It is the depth and inclusivity of cross-sector partnership craft, the credibility built with local decision-makers and strategy-shapers over years, and the capacity to hold a coherent vision through multiple political cycles.  The six current Gold holders are, in effect, the movement's proof of concept: evidence that food partnerships can anchor long-term food systems transformation in a place – despite an immensely precarious funding landscape for these food partnerships.

The journey matters as much as the destination

One of the consistent findings from Gold places is that the Gold application process itself is formative. The Silver-to-Gold phase is galvanising.  It builds internal momentum, draws in new partners and residents, distributes ownership across a partnership, and creates a shared sense of direction.   The process of gathering evidence to build a case provides clarity to statutory partners about the indubitable impact of the food partnership’s approach.

The credibility that Gold status confers also opens practical doors: funding applications carry more weight, policy conversations with statutory partners become easier to access, and the framework provides coherent language for communicating a complex agenda regardless of who is in office locally.  These benefits are vital, particularly given only one of the six food partnerships – Cardiff (thanks to funding from the Welsh Govt for a food partnership in each LA area) – receives secure core funding for their work.

Gold places are also assets for the wider 120+ Sustainable Food Places network.  They are our resident sages.  They carry a decade of practical knowledge about what works: how to build and sustain cross-sector governance, how to enable better access to healthy and sustainable food, how to support local producers and build local supply chains, how to connect diverse food actors and translate that into demonstrable impact.  That accumulated know-how has value well beyond their own localities.

Nine places are going for Gold in 2026

Against that backdrop, the news that nine places are preparing Gold applications for 2026 is significant.  It more than doubles the current cohort and represents a meaningful expansion of the tier.  These nine places are established partnerships, already operating at Silver level or above, who have made a deliberate choice to stretch towards the highest standard of accreditation.

Their ambition reflects something significant about the maturity of the local food partnership landscape in the UK.  A growing number of places have built the infrastructure, the relationships, and the track record of delivering local impact to sustain genuinely systemic food work.  That capacity has been hard-won, and it is not evenly distributed. The fact that nine places are now close enough to Gold to be applying for it suggests the leading edge of the network is advancing.

The first Gold cohort: reciprocal peer learning

Last week's cohort session brought existing and prospective Gold holders together for the first time as a structured peer group. The premise is straightforward: the six current Gold places hold knowledge that the nine prospective places need, and the nine prospective places carry questions and challenges that the six can learn from in return. That reciprocity is deliberate, and the exchanges help us build our collective knowledge as a network about where gaps and opportunities exist in local food systems across the UK.

The conversation surfaced a persistent tension that no Gold place has resolved: the work is extremely labour-intensive, and funding fragility places a ceiling on what even the most capable partnerships can sustain. Addressing that structural constraint, together, is part of what the cohort is for.

There is so much we would like to capture about the learnings of our first wave of Gold places, and the nine that are coming on board:  what are the tools, levers, and human qualities that shape and drive this change over time?  What can we identify in terms of social and economic return on investment?  What resources are needed in a place to catalyse meaningful change and distributed food systems ownership?

We’ll be looking to answer lots of these questions – and more – through our Gold cohort (and seeking additional research funding to support our endeavours – get in touch!)

What 6 + 9 tells us

The combination of six current Gold holders and nine prospective applicants represents the deepest concentration of local food systems expertise in the UK. These are places that have sustained serious, cross-sector work over long periods, in the face of funding uncertainty and shifting political priorities.

The task now is to ensure that expertise circulates across the network and informs practice, policy, and investment at a wider scale.