The city's Food Partnership turns 20, with 5,000 people taught to cook

The Brighton & Hove Food Partnership^1,2,3,4 is 20 years old. It was formally established in 2006, the year the city launched its first food strategy, three years after an informal partnership began.

In a post marking the anniversary, the partnership says it has taught more than 5,000 people basic cookery skills and affordable recipes, and that its work has directly reached more than 20,000 people in the city.

Its cookery teaching now centres on the Community Kitchen on Queens Road, which opened in 2018 after more than a decade of teaching cookery in community venues. Paid cookery classes, venue hire and events there help fund free or cheaper sessions for people dealing with poverty, isolation, disability or poor health. More than 25,000 meals have been shared at the kitchen’s dining table.

The partnership has helped local people and groups set up more than 50 community and school gardens and orchards, including its own 4 acres at Stanmer Wellbeing Gardens. “Children who engaged in school growing projects 20 years ago are now running their own food initiatives,” it said.

Its composting work has reached more than 5,000 households. Food Use Places, a partnership funded by the Lottery’s Climate Action Fund, redistributes surplus food and sets up composting across Sussex. In 2025 its partners kept 1,051 tonnes of food “used not wasted”.

Brighton & Hove was the first place to reach Silver and then, in 2020, Gold status under Sustainable Food Places, a network the partnership’s work helped inspire. There are now food partnerships in more than 125 places across the UK.

Its yearly survey of emergency and affordable food projects has found a five-fold rise since 2014 in the number of people relying on food support. The response is Beyond the Food Bank, a programme designed with food groups, policy makers and people who have been through food insecurity. The aim, the partnership said, is to “address the causes of food insecurity and help build a future in which crisis food support is no longer necessary”.

More than 1,000 volunteers have given over 50,000 hours. One person who took part in its Growing New Roots project said: “I’ve completed training courses, volunteered, had paid employment and now work in my dream job, but only possible due to my experience of Growing New Roots.”

Garden volunteers meet fortnightly at its community gardens, and the city’s community compost sites need volunteer monitors. The Community Kitchen is not currently recruiting cookery volunteers, but it still takes application forms and will be in touch when recruitment opens again.