Climate-friendly food procurement and advertising: what are local authorities in England doing?

Originally posted on the University of Oxford website, Professor Mike Rayner (Oxford Population Health), Dr Jessica Renzella (Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences) and Dr Hannah Forde (Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences) argue that local authorities could play a significant role in steering UK diets to become healthier and more sustainable.

Diets in the UK are unhealthy and environmentally unsustainable. Although there is a degree of controversy about what is precisely meant by unhealthy and unsustainable, we can all agree on some basics. We eat too many highly processed foods, not enough fruit and vegetables but too much meat, and we waste too much food in general. There is an extensive body of research which shows that advertising of unhealthy food has an adverse effect on diets – particularly children’s diets.

Restricting such advertising has long been the target of bodies like the World Health Organization and this is recognised by the UK Government through legislation restricting some advertising of unhealthy foods. More recently the public procurement of healthy food by local governments has been receiving more attention as a means of promoting healthy diets.

In the UK alone, the potential for public food procurement to drive change is considerable. This includes food purchased indirectly by the Government for sale and/or consumption in schools, hospitals, care homes, prisons, etc., for children in care, and for employees such as teachers, medical professionals and the armed forces – costing £2.4bn annually. The Government recognises its responsibility for providing healthy and sustainable food though its Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services (GBSF). But these are badly in need of an overhaul: the nutritional standards are out of date, environmental standards need expanding, and structures for their proper monitoring and enforcement need improving

The 2024 Labour Party Manifesto promised that half of all food purchased across the public sector will be ‘locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards’ and this pledge has been repeated since the Labour Party were elected to form the Government. However there seems to be little progress in making it happen.

Alongside the national government, local authorities – county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, London boroughs - have a responsibility for public health and environmental sustainability. They can, and arguably should, restrict the advertising of unhealthy and unsustainable foods on their premises and on billboards, bus shelters, buses, etc. under their jurisdiction. Local authorities also procure food – for meetings, their workplace canteens, etc - and they can ensure, through contractual agreements, that the food is healthy and sustainable. 

So, what advertising and procurement policies have local authorities in England used to improve the healthiness and sustainability of diets? Most local authorities have some sort of food policy covering a variety of issues. According to the non-governmental organisation, Sustain, more than 20 English local authorities have announced a policy to restrict the advertising of unhealthy foods. This move was partly inspired by Transport for London’s ban, in 2019, on the advertising of unhealthy food in its tube stations, bus shelters, etc. Since then, healthy advertising policies have been pioneered by local authorities such as Bristol. A new development is for local governments to start considering a ban on the advertising of unsustainable food. In May this year, Amsterdam became the first capital city to ban advertisements for meat, the most unsustainable food.

Meanwhile, little is known about local authority policies on food procurement. A 2022 report, published by Sustain, analysing published local authority climate action plans, biodiversity plans and food strategies, identified 109 (out of 179 surveyed) with a sustainable procurement policy, yet only 44 of these covered food procurement.

University of Oxford researchers have contributed to newly-published research which has systematically assessed local authority food advertising and procurement policies and policy ambitions in England with a focus on environmental sustainability. This is in the context that concerns about diets extend beyond health and that 278 of the 317 English local authorities have declared a climate emergency. The new study looked at the websites of all the local authorities in England, as well as other relevant online policy repositories, and took note of any published information related to a policy at any stage of the policy development process. This included policy documents, policy motions, meeting agendas, cabinet meeting reports, etc, that referenced ‘climate friendly’ food advertising or procurement.

The results demonstrated that only five of the 317 local authorities in England had proposed or developed a publicly available climate-friendly food advertising policy (Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, London Borough of Havering, London Borough of Tower Hamlets and North Devon). And even then, the policies lacked sufficient detail and it was unclear whether they had been fully implemented. For example, the most ambitious of these, a motion put forward by North Devon Council which proposed to restrict the advertisement of meat and dairy products, was not successful following a council vote. So, there is still a long way to go before local authorities take action on the advertising of healthy and unsustainable food.

Researchers found that slightly more local authorities (23) have a current climate-friendly food procurement policy addressing a variety of priorities related to the environmental impacts of foods. The most popular procurement policy actions related to local sourcing, increasing plant-based options and waste minimisation. However, climate-friendly food procurement policies have not always been successfully voted in.

So how well are local authorities responding to the challenge to improve the healthiness and sustainability of food, to the extent that this is under their control? The answer is surely ‘not very well.’ Though many have made sterling efforts to improve the healthiness of food, much more needs to be done with respect to climate. Greater support from national governments would help. Updating national-level policies and standards would help create consistency and accountability across local authorities, ensuring proposed policies are robustly designed and implemented to achieve their intended environmental impacts.

Further work being conducted by researchers in the Sustainable Healthy Food Group at the University of Oxford as part of the SHIFT Project will explore, via interviews with local authority staff, the reasons why the climate crisis is largely missing from local authority food policies.

The study ‘Climate-friendly food advertising and procurement in English local authorities: a systematic scoping review of policy ambition’ has been published in PLOS.

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