Decision details

Resolved

(1)          That the following motion be adopted:

“The cost-of-living crisis has highlighted the need for access to enough fresh food, especially fruit and vegetables. This has been worsened by the lack of available allotments and communal gardens.

Greater access to growing spaces would better support CDC in ensuring it places the health and well-being of its residents at the heart of its policy making by increasing the availability of fresh locally produced food at an affordable price. 

Such initiatives can reduce pressures on NHS and social care whilst increasing community cohesion, tackling loneliness and isolation, and providing for the healthy food needs of their neighbourhoods.

We recognise that officers already work with our communities to encourage them to come together to develop local growing spaces in areas of under-used publicly owned land and that we have endorsed the countywide Food Strategy. But that we can always do more.

This council therefore calls on the Executive to,

1.    Identify council owned land suitable for community cultivation and facilitate the production of a publicly available map of such sites.

2.    Adopt a ‘Right to Grow’ policy whilst continuing to work with Cherwell Collective and other community organisations to encourage the adoption of such land for growing schemes by means of a simple licence at no direct cost to the community.

3.    Consider ways to encourage developers to include community growing spaces in all new developments and, where practical, on land awaiting development.

4.    Write to all Cherwell MPs asking them to support the national ’Right to Grow’ campaign.”