Members | Sustainable Food Places

West Cheshire Food Partnership

Our goal is to ensure that everyone in west Cheshire has access to affordable, healthy, sustainable and enjoyable food to make a decent meal.

The chair of the west Cheshire Food Partnership is Rebecca Story. Rebecca is the strategic development lead for Food, based at the host organisation of the Food Partnership, Cheshire West Voluntary Action.

In September 2023 the Governance of the Food Partnership was formalised into the Cheshire West and Chester Council Health and Wellbeing Board Structure. The Food Partnership is a sub group of the Eat Well Be Active reference group, which has a reporting line to the Health and Wellbeing Board.

The work of supporting food insecurity has been supported by the Council since 2017, this has expanded it’s remit since 2021 when the Council passed a ‘right to food’ motion and committed to west Cheshire becoming a Sustainable Food Place.

The members include the community and voluntary sector, public sector, health, growers, educational settings and local businesses and people with lived experience of food insecurity are at the heart of all we do.

What we do

We were delighted to become a member of the Sustainable Food Places Network in December 2022.

Since then we have hosted two local Food Summits, one in July 2023, and more recently the second in March 2025.

At our second Food Summit we had workshops on Community Growing Networks, Surplus Food Projects, and Data Impact with a panel discussion on sourcing locally grown and produced foods for community food projects. We had fantastic speakers from Feeding Britain, The University of Chester, Brio Leisure, Feeding Liverpool and Cheshire West and Chester Council.

Read about the food summit here: CWVA holds successful second West Cheshire Food Summit | Cheshire West Voluntary Action : Cheshire West Voluntary Action

We are currently planning for Food Summit number 3 for March 2026.

We have sub groups of the Food Partnership including Diverse and Inclusive Diets, Community Food Security, School Food and Food for the Planet.

Areas of expertise

Partnership & Collaboration

Tackling Food Poverty

Promoting Healthy Eating

Supporting Good Food Business

Good Food Procurement

We have really strong working relationships with Cheshire West and Chester Council, they have funded the Food Partnership (in its various forms) for the last 7 years. It started with a relationship with Public Health but this has grown significantly over the years, and we are engaged in strategic conversations and have been tasked by the Council to write the local food strategy and action plan. We are also part of the Health and Wellbeing Board Structure.