The Food Roots programme
Food Roots ran from 2021-2025 and supported local food partnerships to embed more sustainable and resilient approaches to tackling food insecurity in their communities. This programme is now closed.
The programme had three rounds of funding.
The most recent round of Food Roots ran from autumn 2023 to summer 2025. This was a larger programme with three elements:
- Direct grants were provided to support 22 new and existing food partnerships to improve the resilience and sustainability of their local response to food insecurity
- A learning support programme provided learning sessions and mentoring for grantee organisations, to ensure that sustainable delivery was at the heart of the offer. This included specific training to help partnerships to increase the take up of Healthy Start in their communities, and mentoring to develop their fundraising capacity and wraparound support provision.
- An independent evaluation and support for partnerships to improve their data collection.
We’re grateful to all previous grantees of Food Roots, and to our delivery partners.
Food Roots in previous years
This round of Food Roots funding provided short-term capacity grants to food partnerships in 30 different London boroughs. This work recognised the extraordinary level of pressure that emergency and community food providers were under at the height of the cost-of-living crisis, and supported best practice in partnership working and financial support in crisis settings. The grants funded delivery of a range of local projects running until August 2023.
The first Food Roots Incubator programme ran from May 2021 to August 2022. This stage supported 10 food partnerships across London with grants and incubator support to learn, grow, and develop more resilient and sustainable delivery approaches, as communities were recovering from the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Programme evaluation
The evaluation of the most recent Food Roots programme was completed by ICF. It is designed to help local authorities and food partnerships understand how to take next steps in their work, with examples and case studies that can apply to their own local communities. The evaluation found that:
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Food Roots helped develop and re-establish food partnerships, with coordinators playing a key role in building trust among partners, fostering inclusive membership, and strengthening governance.
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Funding gave partners space to plan long-term strategy beyond crisis food provision, including exploring shared infrastructure projects
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Some partnerships were able to improve referral pathways and signposting, including training staff, embedding advice in community hubs, and testing digital referral tools.
The full evaluation is expected to be published on 6 February 2026.
Food partnerships in London
Many previous grantees of the Food Roots programme are members of Sustain’s Sustainable Food Places London Network, which was set up as Food Roots closed. Please follow the link and get in touch if you have questions or would like to be involved.
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