Archive for year: 2026

In February 2026, I was honoured to contribute to the Right to Food UK Commission at Hirst Welfare Centre, in Ashington, led by Ian Byrne MP. We discussed the broader impact of food insecurity across Northumberland – looking beyond access to food itself to the effect it has on social inclusion, mental wellbeing, family life and life chances.

As a newcomer to the North East I’m incredibly grateful for the generosity with which I’ve been welcomed into these conversations. It was a privilege to listen to the depth of knowledge, lived experience and rooted commitment of fellow panellists, including West Northumberland Food Bank. Some reflections have stayed with me.

Firstly, we can’t silo poverty. Faced with complex problems, the temptation is to reduce them to a single policy headline or intervention. Fuel, food, housing and transport poverty are not separate problems. They are different expressions of structural poverty & exclusion. When income is insecure and essential costs are high, families are constantly trading off one basic need against another.

The North East carries deep economic scars. Many communities have been stripped of essential assets through the reduction of industry and long-term underinvestment. The consequences of fragile local economies, reduced opportunity, weakened infrastructure and increased precarity are intergenerational.

Adapt (NE) was founded to tackle barriers, particularly in access to buildings, services and transport faced by people with disability. 30 years on, these still matter. Food insecurity is not just about provision. It’s about access, mobility, digital exclusion, health, income security and dignity.

Recently I reflected on the language of ‘disadvantage’. Although then it related to education, language shapes all sectors. Deficit-based language risks reducing people and communities to what they lack rather than recognising agency, capability and inherent worth. It can quietly signal lowered expectations and surprise at success rather than belief in potential.

If we are not careful, the way we talk about ‘food poverty’ or ‘deprived communities’ can frame people as the problem rather than naming the structural barriers that constrain them. We must be alert to this in the third sector as in any other. Communities are not deficient, systems are.

Perhaps the most important takeaway was that we cannot solve this through food provision alone. Community food initiatives are vital and often heroic. But redistribution without structural reform risks normalising crisis. Solutions must operate at multiple levels:

* A genuine real Living Wage
* Stable, secure employment
* Investment in local economies
* Transport and infrastructure that enable access
* Education that includes financial and food literacy
* Policy that recognises the interdependence of poverty drivers

The answers will be both macro and hyper-local, and can’t be top-down. They must be shaped with communities, not imposed.

High expectations, whether in ed or economic policy, start with belief not surprise. People and places should not have to prove they are exceptions to be valued. I say it frequently but words don’t just describe policy, they reveal what and who we truly value.