Brent Council has become the first local authority in London to allow the use of its facilities to tackle child hunger.
This summer, Brent Council has permitted the use of their kitchen facilities to London’s Community Kitchen, an NW London charity which has helped to feed 500,000 people in the capital of London who are experiencing food hunger, with the aim to create over 50,000 meals to distribute across the Brent Food Aid Network (BFAN) and neighbouring borough’s to support children facing food insecurity.
Pioneering London’s Community Kitchen will work with Brent Council to provide support to children in receipt of free school meals through the holiday periods by obtaining use of the kitchen facilities that have suitable equipment and space to help prepare food, re-distribute fresh food and promote a zero-waste policy.
This shows the important role that local authorities can play in allocating land or suitable premises in distributing fresh, healthy and culturally-appropriate food in areas with high levels of deprivation to reduce child and pensioner poverty in tandem with championing social mobility in society.
As of this year, there are around 10,500 children on free-school meals in the borough with thousands more eligible, and by strengthening the role of a local authority in using their facilities this directly empowers a sustainable supply of surplus food and the distribution of nutritious food that would otherwise go to waste.
This will produce large quantities of food aid into the existing BFAN network that will promote a strategy which involves an ethos of zero-waste and a culture of social solidarity in helping people who are having to endure systemic food poverty, in this case an estimated 50,000 meals will be prepared to bolster the BFAN and the north-west London food justice networks.
This is an historic moment of Brent Council working ambitiously toward a Brent without food banks in solidarity with networks across Brent that have the passion, expertise and dedication to unrooting the systemic nature of a long-term food poverty crisis in Brent.
Cllr Ryan Hack (Lab) represents Brondesbury Park ward.
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