Issue - decisions

Food strategy - to support the principles of the Oxfordshire Food Strategy and agree to develop an action plan

26/01/2023 - Oxfordshire Food Strategy

The chair, Councillor Emily Smith, declared an interest in this item and left the meeting during its consideration.  Councillor Bethia Thomas, vice-chair, took the chair. 

 

Cabinet considered the head of policy and programmes’ report on the Oxfordshire Food Strategy.  Oxfordshire County Council had commissioned Good Food Oxfordshire to produce a food strategy.  Cabinet was asked to endorse the strategy and agree to develop a local action plan to implement it.  Funding would be available from the county council to help deliver the action plan. 

 

The strategy’s main aims were to ensure:

·        healthy and sustainable food was affordable and accessible to everyone

·        a sustainable food economy where local food businesses flourished

·        more locally produced, sustainable food was bought and consumed locally

·        that food production, consumption and waste had a less negative impact on the planet

 

The Cabinet member for healthy communities reported that the strategy largely reflected the council’s corporate priorities.  Joint Scrutiny Committee had welcomed it also.  However, the opportunity for the council to influence how the strategy was implemented was welcomed.  To this end, a local action plan would be developed and considered by Cabinet in 2023. 

 

Cabinet agreed, supporting the strategy and welcoming the opportunity to develop a local action plan.  This would allow the council to put its own identity on the implementation of the strategy. 

 

RESOLVED to:

 

(a)    endorse the Oxfordshire Food Strategy (Part One) principles and framework for delivery, attached at Appendix 1 to the head of policy and programmes’ report to Cabinet of 2 December 2022’; and

 

(b)    ask officers to work with relevant partners to develop a detailed local food strategy action plan (Part Two). 


 

Contact us - Democratic services

Phone icon

01235 422520
(Text phone users add 18001 before dialing)

Address icon

Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House, Abbey Close,
Abingdon
OX14 3JE