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. This report will be published shortly. 
[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).