Our History

April 2022

  • We secured funding of £60,000 to develop a Programme and timescale for the sustainability for Coventry Food Network

July 2022

  • Coventry Food Network (CFN) registered as a charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO)

  • Running throughout the Summer Holidays, The Coventry Holiday Activities and Food Programme (HAF) has a core part of its offer to eligible Coventry children.

  • Coventry HAF partnered with several organisations including Canley Community Centre, Coventry Central Seventh Day Adventist Church (Radford), Moat House Community Trust, Holbrook’s Community Care Association, Feeding Coventry.

August 2022

  •  We secured £15,000 from Coventry Building Society to deliver the Healthy Meals. Healthy Choices programme in schools and Food Hubs and did so during the Autumn in partnership with Groundwork at Stoke Primary, Joseph Cash and Southfields Primary School.

September 2022

  • We developed a “core” food offer that is now provided by all social supermarkets across the City.

  • This standardised food offer has been agreed with all hubs and forms part of the partnership agreement.

  • We began to work closely with senior council officers on the DWP Household Support Fund - food parcels can be collected from 8 of our social supermarkets, including Stoke Aldermoor, Canley and Henley Green.

October 2022

  •  We secured £200,000 from Coventry Building Society’s cost of living fund

  •  Business in the Community continued to support the work of the Network by engaging businesses such as Capita and Severn Trent in organising food collections and by connecting the network with business volunteers who can offer support on services such as website development.

  • A 10k match funding donation from a combination of National Grid, Linklaters and Salesforce enabled Foleshill Community Centre to access 100k capital funding towards a refurbishment of the centre and building an on-site café.

November 2022

  •  CFN formed a working group to analyse the needs of the network from a centralised database system to provide individual hubs with the information they need to understand their own levels of demand, patterns and trends.

  •  A brief was created for the requirements and was consulted on with a selection of social supermarket partners.

  •  The system design and development were completed by December 2022 and we are now actively rolling this out to the social supermarkets with the aim of each using the new system within the coming months.

January 2023

  •     We developed a partnership agreement between CFN and the 15 social supermarkets.

  •   As part of this process, we met with each individual hub to outline and the key components which include eligibility for membership of CFN, what members can expect from CFN what CFN expects from members, data protection and termination of the agreement.

February 2023

  •   We hosted a briefing session/workshop in February2023 at the Visitor Centre in the War Memorial Park– this was a time for informal networking, sharing background Information/aspirations for the Coventry Food Network (CFN) as well as an opportunity to join in a roundtable discussion.

  •   The conference was well attended with representatives from both the social supermarkets and Coventry City Council.

March 2023 onwards

  •  We have developed a draft sustainable food strategy for the city. This is subject to further discussion with partners and local authority officers as this focus has been deprioritised ahead of other areas of priority for the time being.

  • We intend to submit an expression of interest in May 2023 for applying for the Sustainable Food Places Bronze Award – key aspects inclue:

  • Taking a strategic and collaborative approach to good food governance and action - by establishing a broad, representative and local food partnership and developing, delivering and monitoring a food strategy/action plan.

  • Building public awareness, active food citizenship and a local good food movement- by inspiring and engaging the public about good food and fostering a local good food movement.

  • Tackling food poverty, diet related ill-health and access to affordable healthy food- by tackling food poverty and promoting healthy eating.