About Food Flagships
In June 2014, the Mayor launched our Food Flagships programme with two pilot boroughs: Croydon and Lambeth. Using the national School Food Plan as a foundation, our Food Flagships used funding to encourage the wider community to make healthy eating the norm.
What is a Food Flagship?
After a competitive bidding process we chose our two Food Flagship boroughs in 2014: Lambeth and Croydon.
Being a Food Flagship meant taking part in new and existing food-related programmes. The activities in each borough were designed to:
- improve the quality of food available to schools and communities
- increase understanding of how diet effects health
- develop practical cookery skills
- encourage a love of good food
Background to the programme
In July 2013 the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, published the independent School Food Plan. This plan set out a programme to improve food in schools across the country.
This plan included a commitment from the Department for Education to support City Hall, the London Food Board and the Mayor’s Fund for London, to launch two Food Flagship Boroughs in London.
These flagships would use the Schools Food Plan as a basis to encourage change in schools and communities.
Involving the whole of London
Although there were only two flagship boroughs, the benefits have impacted all of London.
The flagship boroughs demonstrated, to a national and international audience, the positive effect that a ‘whole environment approach’ to food can have on health and attainment.
The knowledge gained from transforming the food systems in these two boroughs has been shared across the whole city and beyond. Both Flagship boroughs shared learning with other boroughs and partners by regularly presenting at the London Food Board's sub-group, the Boroughs Food Group.
As well as their Food Flagship activities, Lambeth and Croydon also made the most of other city-wide programmes available to all London boroughs. These included Food Growing Schools: London, Healthy Schools London and the London Healthy Workplace Charter.
Food Flagships in the media
Rosie Boycott – previous Chair of the London Food Board and champion of the Mayor’s Food Flagship programme – was interviewed for two articles in the Guardian and the Evening Standard.
These articles stated that our entire relationship with food has to change if we're going to tackle the obesity crisis:
Food is a drug, and we have to learn to say no . . . inactivity is no longer excusable. That’s why, this week, we are launching an initiative in two London boroughs, Lambeth and Croydon, to transform the way we eat. We’re starting with the schools, building on the School Food Plan . . . But it doesn’t stop there: we’re going to lobby fast food outlets, local restaurants, supermarkets and food manufacturers to change how and what they sell.
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