Food: West Yorkshire

(asked on 12th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support his Department is providing to organisations that aim to tackle food (a) waste and (b) poverty in West Yorkshire.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 20th April 2021

(a) Waste

Since 2018, over £11 million of grants have been awarded to the surplus food redistribution sector to make sure more surplus food goes to those who have a need in the months and the years to come. In Yorkshire alone, sixteen projects worth over £2.3 million were funded. Hundreds of the grants that make up the £11 million are providing the infrastructure such as vehicles, freezers and fridges to redistributors both large and small across the country.


Through the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) we continue to work closely with the redistribution sector and the across the food chain to tackle any barriers to increasing redistribution including through the provision of tools and guidance.

(b) Poverty in West Yorkshire

The Government has built on the significant support given to the most vulnerable during the initial months of the pandemic, by delivering a winter support package to help the economically vulnerable. This package included increasing the value of Healthy Start Vouchers, the national rollout of the Holiday Activities and Food programme, and a £170 million Covid Winter Support Grant to local authorities which started in December to support households with food and other essential costs.

The winter package also included £16 million of funding for Defra to support food charities with the purchasing and distribution of food to the vulnerable over a 16-week period starting from the beginning of December. This funding stream was managed by the food redistributor FareShare and helped to support a number of areas across England, including West Yorkshire.

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