Liverpool’s Covid-19 Pandemic Food Insecurity Taskforce

The Liverpool Food Insecurity Task Force is a multi-agency group that has been working together over the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to tackling the day-to-day challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, they have been working together to think strategically and develop the Good Food Plan.

Liverpool City Plan 2020

The City Plan is a commitment from key public, private and voluntary sector partners (referred to as ‘Team Liverpool’) to tackle inequalities to give everyone a better quality of life – regardless of background, identity or postcode. It is a roadmap to drive Liverpool’s economic recovery following the coronavirus pandemic and is directly linked to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The Good Food Plan is a key element of Liverpool’s City Plan vision to create a ‘thriving sustainable, fair city for everyone.’

Liverpool’s Pandemic Pledges

To complement the City Plan, Liverpool has set ten pledges which aim to make the city, its communities, its residents, and its businesses thrive over the next year and beyond. The Good Food Plan delivers part of one of Liverpool City Council’s ‘Pandemic Pledges’, ‘Good Food, Warm Home’, announced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Poverty Action Group

Set up in 2013 with the remit of encouraging stakeholders to work with the City Council to tackle poverty and provide support and assistance to those citizens suffering hardship. Over the last few years the Poverty Action Group has invested in and worked together on a range of initiatives to mitigate the impact of food insecurity. These have tended to be reactive and lacking in a single central point of coordination as part of a wider strategic and tactical plan for mitigating food insecurity. The premise to develop a Good Food Plan for Liverpool emerged from this work.

The Marmot Review and the Marmot Community

In 2010, landmark health inequality paper Fair Society, Healthy Lives (A Marmot Review) set out two policy goals: to create an enabling society that maximizes individual and community potential; and ensure social justice, health and sustainability are at the heart of all policies.

In creating a Good Food Plan, we are working towards these goals, with our work directly
connecting in with the six policy objectives set out in the review:

  1. Giving every child the best start in life
  2. Enabling all children, young people, and adults to maximize their capabilities and
    have control over their lives
  3. Creating fair employment and good work for all
  4. Ensuring a healthy standard of living for all
  5. Creating and developing sustainable places and communities
  6. Strengthening the role and impact of ill-health prevention.

A progress review published in early 2020 found growing evidence that health inequalities in the UK are widening and life expectancy is stalling. In 2021, the research team highlighted how regional health inequalities had been accentuated by the pandemic, urging immediate action by all levels of government to reduce further
inequality.

In 2021, Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership began its journey to form a
‘Marmot Community’. The region is being supported by the research team to measure and
reduce health inequality in the region. Click here to watch the presentations from the launch event, which include highlighting the work of the Good Food Plan.