Increasing capacity for food provision in Birmingham
As part of the council’s cost of living response, we undertook work to increase the capacity of food provision organisations to provide food through 4 projects:
1. Youth Centre Kitchen Support – £14,000 of funding for Birmingham Youth Service to improve the infrastructure of their kitchens.
2. Surplus Food Hub Pilot – we provided £25,000 as an incubator grant to support a surplus food hub in Balsall Heath, which could transform food that would otherwise go to waste to meals for the community.
3. The Affordable Food Infrastructure Fund – a large and wide-reaching grant scheme to the value of £173,000 for food projects to purchase infrastructure and equipment in order to provide more food that is nutritious, culturally appropriate and safe (and hot where appropriate) to more people, in ways that enable dignity, choice and/or socialisation.
4. The Affordable Food Models Grant – a more targeted grant scheme to the value of £86,000 for organisations to set up affordable food models in specified locations in Birmingham (deprived areas which did not already have an affordable food model).
We have conducted an evaluation of these projects. We found that supporting community groups with food provision infrastructure can have direct and indirect benefits. It also demonstrated the utility of both wider, more open grants and targeted grants to catalyse specific projects. We provide some recommendations for future work in the report.
Surplus food exploration report
We are working with The Active Wellbeing Society to help Birmingham make better use of surplus food.
Millions of people struggle to afford a healthy diet, yet millions of tonnes of food are wasted across the United Kingdom. In Birmingham, nearly half the population cannot afford nutritious food, while surplus food continues to go to landfill.
This highlights a broken food system. While long-term change requires national policy action, redirecting surplus food to local community groups can reduce waste and support people in need.
We have produced a Surplus food exploration Report to help Birmingham coordinate how surplus food is sourced and distributed. The report includes potential sources and information on how to access them.
Read the Surplus food exploration report
Page last updated: 16 April 2025
