Ep 3: Tackling Hunger in Rural Areas with Charlotte Winterbottom

In this episode, Andrew is joined by Charlotte Winterbottom, the Policy and Partnerships Manager at Rural Action Derbyshire, an organisation at the heart of one of the first Feeding Britain pilot projects created in Derbyshire. As such, Charlotte is able to reflect on the unique challenges of living rurally when it comes to food insecurity whether that be a lack of access to affordable shops or expensive and inaccessible transport. She discusses the importance of tackling rural food deserts, the need for food services to be more bespoke in rural areas, and the necessity of providing a pathway from crisis food to affordable food. This episode forms part of a mini-series marking 10 years since the All Party Parliamentary Group Report into Hunger in the UK and the setting up of Feeding Britain’s first projects and pilots. As part of this series, we will reflect on the big challenges, ideas and programmes that have emerged in the last ten years whilst looking ahead at what action is required to end the mass dependence on food parcels in the UK. We will hear from key partners who contributed to the parliamentary report or became a pilot project created as part of the report’s findings. This series contributes to the Feeding Britain podcast series which offers insights into eliminating hunger in the UK. Feeding Britain combines practical, policy, and research expertise in the fight against hunger, and we will hear from frontline projects, parliamentarians, and academic specialists on the work they undertake with Feeding Britain to eliminate hunger and its root causes from the UK.