Shrewsbury Food Hub

PROJECT OVERVIEW: Shrewsbury Food Hub first contacted CREST@UCS in February 2018. It’s initial objectives were to reduce food waste by diverting supermarket surplus and to support community groups with the free food. These developed into contributing to food security in the UK: trialling innovative solutions to reduce food waste and increase food security and then sharing their findings.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES: The Food Hub secured funding to develop a Food Poverty Strategy for Shropshire, which will set the platform for creating effective solutions in the county. They required CREST@UCS support in mapping the current situation, including causes, scale and current factors across the county, and interviewing people experiencing food poverty.

PROJECT SOLUTIONS: The result of the collaboration was a geospatial data driven interactive food poverty map of Shropshire, which was used by the Food Hub to inform their strategy going forward. It has enabled them to locate Food Hubs in areas of Shropshire that are food poverty “hotspots”. They now provide food to 56 groups, 11 schools, 11 youth clubs and 4 Age UK day centres, playgroups and children’s sports clubs.