£50,000 promised to tackle food poverty in Worcester remains unspent

Worcester City Council promised to spend at least £50,000 on measures to deal with rising food poverty in the city back in March 2021.

Almost two years on, most of the money remains unspent.

Worcester City Council said it had already spent a significant amount of money on helping the vulnerable in the last two years including providing free school meals vouchers and donations to Worcester Foodbank and had not needed to tap into the £50,000.

Cllr Louis Stephen said he was “disappointed” the money had not been touched and was hoping to have already started ascribing the desperately needed cash to worthwhile initiatives.

“This money has been around for a little while now and it hasn’t been spent.

“It’s great that we are talking about all these things, but the fact that we have had the best part of £50,000 and there are people in need, and we’ve not spent it… That needs to be spent.

“I was hoping that at this meeting we might have had a menu of things that we could choose from and we would be able to decide it.

“Little disappointed that we are not going to be deciding how to spend that money [tonight],” he said during the meeting of the city council’s health and wellbeing committee in the Guildhall on January 30.

DISAPPOINTED: Cllr Louis Stephen (Image: Newsquest)

Lloyd Griffiths, the council’s director of operations, said the council had already spent a “not so insignificant sum” on tackling food poverty and would be “trying its best” to have options for the money by March but could not “100 per cent commit” to be able to present them to councillors.

At the same meeting, councillors heard from Christopher Whitehead Language College headteacher Neil Morris who spoke about how his school was forced to pay for food and clothing for an increasing number of deprived pupils.

The next meeting of the health and wellbeing committee takes place in mid-June which would be more than two years after the £50,000 was set aside.

At the meeting, councillors did finally agree to spend £3,200 following a request from Worcester Community Trust to buy a community fridge and freezer for the Green Hub in Dines Green.

A child poverty ‘task and finish group’ was set up by councillors to investigate the problem in late 2019 and £50,000 was then set aside to spend on tackling food poverty in March 2021.

By November that year, another report by council officers said there was “no clear use” for the money and by June 2022, the council’s position had not changed with it saying it “would be in a better position” to decide how to divvy out the funds by July.

Last summer, councillors were told how the number of hungry children relying on food banks for meals had soared and some parts of the city were among the most deprived in the country.

The report, which investigated food poverty in Worcester, said the number of hungry children was “worrying” and had become “an increasing area of concern.”

Based on the figures, city council wards such as Rainbow Hill, Warndon and St John’s were among the ten per cent most deprived in the UK and had the most children receiving free school meals than anywhere else in the city.