About community pantries in Hampshire
There are 19 community pantries set up across Hampshire, providing access to affordable fresh, frozen and dry food. In addition, there are eight further locations across the New Forest that are being served by mobile larders with start-up funding from Hampshire County Council.
The solution
The concept of a community pantry is to provide access to groceries at a lower cost than supermarkets or shops.They are seen as a sustainable way of providing food at a reduced cost and dealing with food waste. For a small weekly contribution, community pantry members are able to access food at a significantly higher value, for example a £5 voucher equates to £15 in groceries. The range of food available can change on a weekly basis.
Anyone can access a community pantry; they just need to sign up to become a member. This is managed as part of the County Council’s ‘Connect4Communities’ programme, under Hampshire Children’s Services.
Since December 2020, the Department for Work and Pensions has been running grant schemes to provide essential support to those most in need across England. This included food, energy, water bills and other essentials. Each funding cycle ran for six months and one of the key challenges facing Hampshire County Council was in providing essential support to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
The outcome
Implementation
In the first phase of support, the Council sent retail vouchers directly to eligible families, through their school network, to be redeemed in supermarkets and community pantries.
Over 100 Hampshire schools already used Evouchers in the provision of retail vouchers to their free school meal eligible families and therefore, enabled schools to implement the system and send communications out to parents efficiently.
Assistant Director of Access, Resources and Business Development, Suzanne Smith says:
“A large number of our schools already had connections with Wonde, (Evouchers is part of Wonde Ltd) so the data management solution was in place, familiar and popular with our schools and families.”
“The level of support from the Evouchers account management and reporting was excellent. The delivery from the team was responsive and swift.”
Expanding the offering
After Christmas 2021, Hampshire evaluated their offer, updating the list of retailers to include their community pantries as a new choice for families, providing additional retailer choice and significant value for money. This update was implemented efficiently and enabled the County Council to issue not only retail vouchers, but also utility vouchers (providing support for heating and water).
“Because of Evoucher’s enhanced technology, we were able to move quickly and brought 16 pantries online over the two week Christmas period.”
“Broadening the retail choice really helped to increase awareness of the Community Pantries among residents. We have had anecdotal reports of increased footfall, higher levels of income, greater reach and, with the added option of support through utility vouchers, pantries have been able to provide a well rounded support for their customers.”
Supporting more communities
Hampshire County Council works with 11 local district and borough councils. Under the current funding round, these councils provide food vouchers to pensioners eligible for pension credit and households eligible for local tax credit.
District councils have their own challenges because their data maintenance and management is different to that of schools. Suzanne notes:
“Schools have a direct channel of distribution to their families and are fully up to date on data protection and their management of data is robust.”
“Evouchers have multiple delivery solutions available that ensure no matter how the data is provided to them, they can support our districts.”
The future
With the rising cost of living, the next focus for Hampshire County Council is to provide vital support in stabilising the everyday lives of their residents. To support this, the County Council is focused on developing the connectivity of key groups to gain wider reach and knowledge. It works with a number of partners including fire, police, children’s services and others.. They share knowledge, feedback and ideas and work on solutions that can bring vital help exactly where it’s needed the most.
Hampshire County Council would like to further support its community pantries once it has undertaken further work to better understand those using the pantries (and those who could benefit but don’t use them). Suzanne says:
“For the pantries to truly be part of our community and help those who need it most, education is key. We need to make people aware of the impact of minimising food waste by shopping in pantries, whilst reducing the negative connotations sometimes associated with them.”
The County Council plans to introduce the next phase for provision soon; building wraparound support services in the pantries. The aim is to make them more like community hubs – a connecting point for local residents – and this could include having community health practitioners, Citizen Advice clinics, offering cooking classes and other services the community may need.
