A food partnership for East Kent?

Canterbury Society Food Partnerships Event - 11th May 2026

The Food Partnerships event, hosted by the Canterbury Society, attracted 60 people including 4 excellent speakers and several local Councillors. Our audience came from all sectors of the food chain – farmers, growers, community gardens/orchards, retail, community cafes, churches, food banks and community kitchens/larders as well as local university academics and other interested individuals.

Anna Taylor, Chair of the Kent FP and Exec Director of the Food Foundation spoke about the progress (and need for) national food policies and strategies to tackle the shocking statistics on rising health issues related to ultra processed foods and the need for Sustainable Food Places partnerships at a local level.

Zak Shinwarie, Chair of Medway FP spoke about their progress within the Council Public Health perspective. Projects already up and running included a community supermarket, cookery courses, healthy vending machines, oral health team and the ‘Food for Life’ programme adopted in schools and run by the Soil Association. He stessed the importance or working within or in partnership with local councils, public health departments and the NHS.

Maya  Amangeldeeyeva spoke passionately about food waste and how they are tackling this at a grass roots level. She has built up relationships with 160 supermarkets and other food outlets who deliver surplus foods to her warehouse which then opens in the evening for anyone to come and collect. She also spoke about her 2 ‘Free shops’ for clothing/essential goods and how she plans to train people from her 200 strong volunteers to set up and run more of these. She showed us, through her work, the power of community enterprise, harnessing volunteers, local grass roots actions and the importance of building and maintaining local partnerships.

Emily O’Brien, Green Councillor and Cabinet member at Lewes District Council for Nature, Climate & Food Systems, spoke about the key role local Councils play in supporting or leading FP’s. Councils are key partners in a majority of food partnerships and food strategies, and can also play a direct role in rebuilding local food systems e.g. through Local Plan policy and ‘procurement’ (purchasing) policies where there may be opportunities to favour local suppliers. They should also include a ‘food systems strategy’ in Local Plans. At a local level we need to ‘join up the dots’ connecting the hundreds of food growers, suppliers and access points in East Kent and gave examples of Lewes draft policy to protect local food infrastructure and the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership as a good example. She also referred to Sustainable Food Places as a good starting point for setting up new Food Partnerships.

A participative and pertinent Q&A session followed and the event ended on a ‘call to action’ for people to feedback their thoughts via emails and come forward if they are interested in supporting or leading a Food Partnership in East Kent. The Canterbury Society offered to facilitate a follow event.

Carole Wells

Trustee

Canterbury Society