Food Access Toolkit: Report on the development of an interactive tool for policy and action on household food insecurity

In 2024, the University of Bath and Bath and North East Somerset Council (B&NES) partnered in the development and evaluation of a toolkit to engage policy makers with issues surrounding food insecurity.

This project, which was funded by the University’s UKRI-supported Policy Support Fund 2023, built on a program of partnership research on food insecurity in the B&NES region, which was led by Dr Leda Blackwood from the University of Bath and Ms Cathy McMahon and Ms Milly Carmichael from the B&NES Council Public Health team. The research was supported by three Research Associates (Ms Fran Baber, Ms Rebecca Hurwitz, and Ms Jesse Wise). The toolkit was developed in collaboration with an artist-designer, Ms Ellie Shipman.

The project had the following objectives:
•Co-create evidence-based toolkits to use in two policy contexts: local transport and community. The toolkit will be designed to engage users with the lived experience of food insecurity and facilitate discussions about where and how to intervene.
•Conduct two policy-development workshops with stakeholders in each policy context to pilot the content and activities contained in the toolkits and to develop and document process/session plans, which will also be included.
•Share the toolkits and learnings from this project via the B&NES council website. Disseminate locally, regionally, and nationally, via council networks (e.g., WECA, Feeding Britain, Local Government Association, Connecting Communities forums, transport providers).

This report provides an overview of the research we conducted on food insecurity, and the findings that inform our food insecurity toolkit. We then provide a detailed explanation of the development of the toolkit and supporting workshops and give a summary of their outcomes to date.