WFP was formed at the end of 2017 when a number of individuals from across the public, private and third sector organisations who had a common interest in creating a sustainable and fair food system came together having been inspired by the highly successful national Sustainable Food Places Network.

Our 5 key themes:

1. Good food for all
2. Strengthen the local economy
3. Environmental sustainability
4. Strong and resilient communities
5. Fairness in the food chain

Winchester Food Partnership includes representatives of the University of Winchester, city and county councils, health professionals, academics, business owners, community organisations and charities.

Winchester Food Partnership became an official member of the national Sustainable Food Places organisation in March 2019. This is a network of cross sector partnerships in over 80 towns, cities, boroughs and counties in the U.K. that are using food as a vehicle to transform their local food system. Winchester benefits from this by being able to share good practice with places across the U.K. from Brighton to Aberdeen.

We successfully applied to take part in the national Veg Cities Campaign, and in 2020 received a small grant to co-ordinate a Veg Cities campaign across Winchester; areas of work included increasing the consumption of veg, improving food literacy, increase in local growing (personal and community spaces), supporting local businesses and reducing food waste.

Unfortunately all of the projects involving the business community, and most of the growing projects, were curtailed by the pandemic, but we continued to work alongside community food projects and focussed on promoting the Healthy Start scheme. We continue to promote community growing spaces through the Good to Grow Network, and work alongside the Hampshire County Council Waste Prevention team in promoting the reduction of food waste, and the sharing of surplus food where possible.

Following our coordination work during the pandemic, where we successfully linked food charities to improve efficiency and cooperation, during 2021 we undertook some academic research into the issues and barriers into accessing good food. We also formed our Access to Good Food Learning Partnership where we not only share best practise between ourselves, but we are actively looking for ways to include the community voice in the decision making process. Again, due to the success of this work at the beginning of 2022 we received a grant to run more workshops so we can train members in tools needed to run our own community research and hear the community voice in the separate food projects, but also in our combined partnership development.

We are also currently involved in a Food for the Planet campaign; creating a local Sustainable Buying Consortium to make it easier for small/medium scale purchasers to access local producers, and working with Winchester City Council to (hopefully) embed Good Food into their policies and strategic thinking. Our Good Food Movement which is part of the WinACC‘s WeCAN project is looking to engage Parish Councils and community groups to take local action on climate change; our emphasis is on the contribution that food choices makes to the environmental footprint.