London’s food policy: Leveraging the policy sub-system, programme and plan

Achieving Sustainable Urban Development with an Ageing Population: An “Age-Friendly City and Community” Approach

“…Policy integration is the underlying theory of this study. The definition of policy integration varies between studies because of different research focuses [27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. However, inter-sectoral coordination is the common theme of these definitions.…”

Disrupting from the ground up: community-led and place-based food governance in London during COVID-19

“…British cities do not have dedicated food policies or strategies and, mayors, where in place, have limited powers. However, London is an exception: it has an elected mayor (Mayor of London) and governance body (Greater London Authority or GLA), and it employs a ‘food in all policies’ strategy ( Parsons, Lang, and Barling 2021 ) in order to achieve other policy goals such as better health, circularity, carbon reductions and community engagement. Two of its city-wide policies speak directly to the Mayor's ambition to integrate food across the policy and governance spectrum.…”

“…There is a clear disconnect between national and urban food governance, and British cities do not have urban food strategies except for London. The example of London shows that urban food governance is further fragmented and shaped by local conditions and priorities ( Parsons, Lang, and Barling 2021 ), with little integration across the food, urban planning and food security sectors, at both metropolitan and municipal levels. However, responses to COVID-19 in relation to access to food in London have seen place-based and community-led initiatives, where volunteers, third sector organisations, community groups and local government have worked together to tackle food insecurity by using existing but also creating new and disruptive governance structures.…”

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“…While the absence of a legislative mandate can create space for policy innovation and entrepreneurship (Parsons et al, 2021), it may be one of the reasons why policy making on food systems varies considerably between Australian LGs (Carrad et al, 2022), as it means that LGs must take the initiative in developing food system policies and programs. Our findings also illustrate how LG food system policies are shaped by laws, policies, institutional structures, and funding sources at higher levels of government, pointing to the need to carefully attend to the division of powers between different levels of government when carrying out analysis of local food system governance, and to the constraints on LGs created by existing governmental structures (Coulson & Sonnino, 2019;Parsons et al, 2021). These constraints were one of the reasons why partnerships and collaborations were important to the delivery of food systems initiatives, as well as for generating community ownership of policies and programs.…”