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The Resilience Dividend: A New Strategy for UK Food Security

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Prioritising Community Repair over Emergency Relief

1. Executive Summary

This briefing reframes the strategic approach to addressing UK food insecurity, drawing on recent evidence. The findings reposition the policy focus away from reactive responses and towards a primary strategy of prevention and resilience. For the large majority of households navigating a persistent struggle with food insecurity, holistic, community-based models that repair financial and social wellbeing are the first line of defence. For the smaller, specific group who reach a crisis point of immediate need, a cash-based response should be available as a last resort. This evidence calls for a re-prioritisation of policy and investment towards a three-rung pathway: a preventative financial foundation, a primary strategy of community resilience-building, and a targeted response for acute need.

2. The Primary Strategy: Building Holistic Resilience

The primary strategy for tackling food insecurity must focus on building holistic resilience. For many, food insecurity is “not a temporary emergency, but a prolonged, structural crisis”—a persistent and recurring struggle that erodes wellbeing over time. The national study, Building Resilience [1], provides robust evidence that this state of long-term precarity inflicts compounding harm, which the report finds “cash alone cannot repair.” This underscores the need for a strategy that moves beyond purely financial solutions. The benefits of holistic, relational support are crucial for the broad range of households worn down by a persistent struggle, including many in work. This person-centred approach is also why such models are more suitable than a simple cash transaction for individuals with more complex needs, such as addiction or severe mental health challenges. The focus must be on “more-than-food” community models that can repair harm and build capacity for all.

  • Methodology: The findings from this national study are based on a large-scale comparative analysis, designed as a ‘natural experiment’. The survey, conducted by YouGov in May and June 2025, included 14,156 adults from low-income households. The study compares the outcomes of food club members against a demographically similar group of non-members. This robust methodology, combining descriptive statistics and advanced regression modelling, allows the impact of the food club model on food security, diet, and wellbeing to be clearly isolated and defined.

These models provide both a reparative and preventative function vital to eliminating the need for emergency food aid.

  • A Pathway out of Food Insecurity: Relational models like food clubs are a proven mechanism for recovery. By providing consistent access to affordable, nutritious food, they measurably improve diets and create the stability needed for households to move out of food insecurity.
  • Repairing Wellbeing and Rebuilding Social Capital: The report identifies these models as vital social hubs that directly counteract the isolation that often accompanies prolonged crises. This regular, relational engagement rebuilds confidence and social networks, providing a “powerful buffering effect against the severe negative psychological impacts of food insecurity.”
  • A Preventive Function: By repairing the underlying damage to household wellbeing and nutrition, these interventions build lasting resilience. This, in turn, acts as a preventative measure, reducing the likelihood of future emergencies and decreasing long-term reliance on any form of crisis support.

3. A Targeted Tool for Acute Need: The ‘Last Resort’ Role of Cash

For the specific cohort of households who reach a crisis point of acute, immediate need—a group often directed towards food banks—the evaluation of the Leeds City Council Cash Grant Pilot [2] provides compelling evidence that a cash-based model is a more effective and dignified response than traditional in-kind food aid in this urban setting. It should be positioned as a vital, last-resort tool, not the central pillar of a national strategy.

  • Methodology: The Leeds pilot evaluation employed a mixed-methods approach to assess the impact of a six-month cash grant scheme that ran from October 2021 to April 2022. The research included a quantitative survey with 144 grant recipients, as well as in-depth qualitative interviews with 26 recipients and 12 staff members from referral agencies. This methodology provided rich, user-focused insights into the immediate impact of a grant; however, the evaluation notes the lack of a control group as a limitation in defining long-term outcomes.
  • Dignity and Choice: 94% of recipients stated they would prefer a cash grant over a food parcel, valuing the agency and dignity it provides.
  • Effective Management of Immediate Needs: The grants provided “breathing space,” with funds used for food and other essentials like gas, and electricity payments.

However, the Leeds evaluation confirmed its limits as a long-term solution. With 81% of recipients feeling it was likely they would need to use a food bank again, the evidence is clear: an emergency cash grant is like pumping air into a flat tyre—it provides an immediate, essential fix, but if the underlying puncture is not repaired, the air will quickly leak out again.

4. Nutritional Outcomes: Beyond Emergency Rations

While emergency cash provides the means to buy food, it does not guarantee a healthier diet during a cost-of-living crisis. The Leeds pilot found that the crisis “restricted their ability to afford to buy healthier food.” In contrast, the food club model is shown to directly improve nutritional outcomes by providing consistent and affordable access to a wider variety of fresh and healthy food.

5. The Strategic Risk of an Imbalanced Approach

A singular focus on emergency cash grants, while administratively appealing, is an unsustainable and strategically flawed approach. The simplicity and clear metrics of cash distribution create a significant risk that policy and funding become “stuck” in a reactive loop, neglecting the more complex, long-term work of building resilience.

  • Sustainability and Value for Money: An emergency cash grant is a short-term, high-cost intervention per household. While it provides vital, flexible relief, it does not build capacity. A system that only offers emergency grants is inherently unsustainable, as it fails to reduce future need. Actual value for money is achieved by investing in preventative and resilience-building models that reduce the long-term demand on crisis services. A community-based model can leverage the same investment to provide nutritional, social, and psychological support to a larger number of people over a more extended period, yielding a significantly higher social return on investment.

6. A Comprehensive Strategy: Three Modes of Support

The evidence suggests a three-pronged approach to effective food security policy. To be sustainable, the primary strategy must address the broad, structural issue of long-term hardship. At the same time, the response to acute need serves a smaller, specific population as a last resort.

  • Foundation: Prevention (‘Cash Before’). The first line of defence is an adequate and reliable financial safety net through social security and wages that meet the cost of living.
  • Rung 2: Resilience-Building (‘More-Than-Food’). This is the primary strategy for the majority of households, including many in work, who are navigating a persistent struggle with food insecurity. For this large group, hardship is a long-term reality, not a one-off emergency. Community-based models offer a reparative and preventive pathway out of this state of precarity.
  • Rung 1: Response to Acute Need (‘Cash First’). As a last resort for households that experience a crisis point of immediate need, a rapid and dignified response is essential. Reflecting the rich, user-focused insights from the Leeds pilot—which confirmed the value of cash for immediate relief while its methodology limited conclusions on long-term impact—a flexible cash-based payment is preferable to an emergency food parcel because it is more dignified in affording people choice, and more effective because it allows them to address the multi-faceted nature of their crisis by meeting other urgent needs, such as paying for utilities, alongside buying food. The system must remain adaptable for individuals with complex needs where cash is not the most appropriate support.

While the current policy landscape is disproportionately focused on emergency responses, a fully effective system requires all three rungs to be in place. The strategic priority must be to correct the current imbalance by investing in the overlooked upstream work of prevention and resilience-building. However, in designing this more robust system, a tailored response for acute need must be retained. Omitting this final component creates an “emergency gap,” leaving those with acute need without support and creating a mismatch of need and provision that weakens the overall strategy.

7. Policy Recommendations

To create a complete and sustainable pathway from crisis to security, policy must reflect a clear balance of priorities that acknowledges a context of limited resources. The primary focus must be on upstream interventions that prevent crisis and build long-term resilience, as these offer the greatest social return on investment.

  1. Priority 1: Strengthen the Foundation with Targeted Reforms. While wholesale strengthening of the social security system is the ultimate goal, targeted, cost-effective reforms can have a significant preventative impact. The government should prioritise addressing known drivers of hardship, for example, by ending the five-week wait for Universal Credit and removing the two-child benefit cap. These specific actions would provide a more stable financial foundation for low-income families, reducing the number who fall into crisis.
  2. Priority 2: Invest in Holistic Resilience-Building. The primary investment strategy should be to fund and scale community-based, capacity-building models. While the evidence strongly supports the effectiveness of affordable food clubs, the principle is broader. A dedicated ‘Community Resilience Fund’ should be established to support proven interventions that provide holistic, relational support for long-term recovery.
  3. Priority 3: Formalise an Integrated Emergency Response. The government should support the integration of cash grants into local welfare assistance schemes as the default model for acute emergency relief, positioned as a last-resort safety net. This is not a call for new funding, but a reform of existing emergency systems. To be effective, the allocation process must be transparent and integrated. Local schemes should publish clear eligibility criteria and provide clarity on how grant awards are calculated, while still allowing for discretion by assessors. Crucially, referral agencies providing this emergency support must be resourced to provide a ‘warm handover’ to ‘Rung 2’ resilience-building services, creating a clear and supportive pathway from the immediate crisis response to long-term repair.

About the Author: Dr. Megan Blake is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on food security, social resilience, and community-based food systems. This briefing is based on the findings from her comprehensive national study, Building Resilience: The Role of Food Clubs in UK Food Security, and her analysis of the evidence from the Leeds Cash Grant Pilot evaluation.

[1] Building Resilience: The Role of Food Clubs in UK Food Security (2025) is the first large-scale, independent analysis of the affordable food club model in the UK. The research, by Dr. Megan Blake at the University of Sheffield, was funded by Comic Relief as part of the Nourish the Nation Campaign funded by Sainsbury’s. Available at https://assets.ctfassets.net/zsfivwzfgl3t/5Nkhx11c3EiNcw2EwfIDMG/3b835a7cef5fb0f7b7a7bbb6a60c280d/Building_Resilience__The_Role_of_Food_Clubs_in_UK_Food_Security_Full_Report.pdf


[2]Lipscomb, L. and C. Walker.  2022.  An Evaluation of the Leeds City Council Cash Grant Pilot

Programme.  Available online (https://cms.trussell.org.uk/sites/default/files/wp-assets/Vantage-Point-Research-Leeds-Cash-First-evaluation.pdf).

Food clubs and their social impact

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Many of you will know that I do a lot of research focusing on Rung 2 of the Food Ladders. One of these organisations is The Bread and Butter Thing. I’ve known Mark and Jane since they founded the Food Club in about 2016. In 2019 we did our first member survey. I was a bit tired of the narrative around saving money. My view is you can’t save what you haven’t got in the first place. I wanted to explore the extent to which some of the benefits I had heard about qualitatively were being experienced (A classic example of the benefits of mixed methods or combining intensive and extensive research see table on page 14).

That first survey was the first one to highlight the social benefits attributed to food clubs and the extent to which members experience them (a report is available here). At the time there were just under 8000 TBBT members located in sites primarily across Greater Manchester. And although you won’t see references to this report in the reports from other food club umbrella organisations, the report was shared with them and makes up key impact measures for the sector.

Since that initial survey, TBBT has done an expanded annual members survey. From fairly humble beginnings of a survey that included about 300 responses to just a few questions, the 2024 survey has about 9.5K responses (from a population of about 80K) to a wide range of questions about people’s circumstances, how they are getting by, and how they percieve the impact of joining TBBT has been for them (Some highlights are here). This remains the only large-scale data source that is collected directly from to food club members. I have been proud to have been able to help with this and provide some analysis of the data. I have never managed to find the time to pull out all the rich insights that are buried within. One day, hopefully.

Mark and Vic recently asked me to join them for a podcast (which turned into two!) to talk about the results of the survey for this year. Vic joined TBBT toward the end of the lockdown period. Prior to that she worked for Manchester Council and when the pandemic hit she coordinated their food response brilliantly. Mark introduced me to Vic and we had many discussions about how best to meet the needs of people in Manchester depending upon their circumstances. I have written about that work in a book chapter about food security resilience under Covid 19 that appears in a book called Living with Pandemics.

The podcast, called a Slice of Bread and Butter, usually involves a conversation with a member and then a bit of discussion. These are fascinating insights into the determination and buoyancy of members in the face of struggle. They demonstrate how precarious life can be and how vulnerable most of us are to finding ourselves in similar situations. I encourage you to follow the podcast. They are available on all the major podcast sites and also on the website linked above.

Here are both episodes where we talk about just a tiny proportion of survey findings and how they reveal just how much food clubs, like TBBT, that are carefully curated, organised and managed can make a difference.

Episode 1: Revolutionising Food Support

Episode 2: Affordable nutrition for thriving communities

*New* Food Ladders Toolkit Launched

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On the 10th of September 2024 we launched the Food Ladders Toolkit. The event was held in Lambeth at the Community Shop. Food, based on the food stories of people who use Community Shop, was cooked for us by community members. It was absolutely fantastic. We want to thank all those who helped with the day and those who came and joined us.

If you were unable to join us for the launch and would like to know more, there will be a webinar on 1 October 2024, this time hosted by Sustainable Food Places. I will be talking about the food ladders and will be joined by Mark from The Bread and Butter Thing, another organisation that uses the Food Ladders to structure their support. The link to the event is here.

So why do we need a toolkit?

People in wealthy and poor countries struggle to have the food they need to live their best lives. The reasons for this are complicated. There is a mix of individual, group, community, and national factors. The food ladders is a framework to help communities, service providers, local government, and others develop an understanding and a pathway toward a food system that meets community members’ needs and desires, both now and in the long term.

We can’t expect communities that are already struggling to be able to do this on their own, but we also cannot do it without them. Building something new is hard work. It takes commitment and motivation. This toolkit aims to support those who can help to be able to do so. This toolkit is primarily aimed at those in local government and local food networks. There will be elements that community organisations may also find helpful. It is not a toolkit for those who are struggling.

The toolkit is based on interviews we conducted with about 30 people working in local governments across England. We wanted to understand how people were using the framework. In particular, we wanted to understand its utility and also where the difficulties might be. We found that organisations and local authorities across the UK use the framework to structure their planning and approach to community development, community resilience, health, and poverty. Local authorities using the framework have shifted to partnership working, with public consultation happening at the start of the process rather than toward the end. We learned about joined-up support networks in these places that cut across a variety of projects and organisations who come at the issues from a multitude of different directions. We saw an understanding of how places are designed, how we engage with people, and how we communicate with each other creates positive change.

But we also found several areas where this process can be complicated. Food work touches on multiple departments within a local authority, and coordinating that is needed. Motivation and momentum can flag. Sometimes, community members meet the effort with scepticism. Sometimes, we lose sight of the vision or forget to clearly define what we are building toward. Sometimes, messages are misunderstood. To help with this, we have created workshops, case studies, videos and diagrams and currated links to the work of others that we feel can help overcome these difficulties.

Enter the Toolkit here

I hope that these tools will be helpful. If you think a tool is missing, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. Likewise, I would love to hear stories about how the Food Ladders is being used in your area. You can use the form below to do so.

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Thank you for your response. ✨

The Rise of Food Insecurity in England: Using Food Ladders to overcome the barriers

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The full report is available to download here.

I was recently invited to present at a parliamentary breakfast. In fact, it was to be this morning. But a general election was called, so the breakfast was cancelled. I wrote a report to be handed out at the event about the state of Food Security in England and how it has increased alarmingly. 2018 before the pandemic, the rate was about 1 in every 10 adults. In the summer of 2020, the rate increased by 50%. The situation in 2022 was 1 in every 4 adults.

Vulnerabilities have also shifted over time. In 2020, gender was not a predictor of food insecurity. It now is. Women are more vulnerable compared to men. Those who are most vulnerable earn less than £32K (46.4%), those who are not in paid work (44.8%), and those living in the most deprived areas (39.9%). The groups with the largest percentage increase are those that earn less than £32K (20.5% increase), those not in paid work (16.5% increase), and those in the non-white British ethnic group (14.4%). The groups that showed the highest rates of growth, albeit starting from a lower base, are those who earn more than £32k per year and those over 65.

There are things we can do to address this increased barrier for many. We can work locally to help build the capabilities people need to be food secure, which means improving not just the financial resources people clearly need but also the other resources that facilitate food security in the longer term, such as health, well-being, community connections, and local access to good food. This is what the food ladders aim to do.

Other things could be done at a larger scale as well.

  1. Those who fund community interventions can provide adequate funding to enable these interventions, which includes helping to cover the longer-term costs of paying staff a living wage and providing funding that helps to cover running costs. There is a lot behind offering a service that needs to happen, which is not directly part of the service itself.
  2. The food industry can help organisations with food costs. Asking them to pay full price to offer food at a discount or for free is not sustainable for the organisations doing this work.
  3. In-store, offering incentives to purchase healthy food and making these foods less risky for customers is important as well. The Food Foundation has done some research that explores key metrics supermarkets are doing on this front. Some do better than others. The report has some good ideas.
  4. The government can empower local authorities to develop and deliver food strategies. This will require funding. This was a recommendation in the National Food Strategy, and it should be taken up. The government can also consider and support the need for social investment in levelling up strategies.
  5. Ensuring that people have an adequate income with opportunities for advancement and progression is also needed. Being food insecure should not be reserved for the wealthy. To have a workforce that is able to work in the long term requires that they be able to eat a healthy diet. Without this, health suffers ,and the need for support services increases.

Acknowledgements: This research was funded in part by a UKRI HIEF Knowledge Exchange grant.  Special thanks to Isaac Tendler for his work interviewing local authority officials and for the cover artwork.  Thank you also to Nicole Kennard for the interview material with people struggling in 2020.