Access to affordable, healthy and nutritious food is one of the core principles underpinning the Food Vale partnership’s work, as can be seen in our charter aim of A good meal for everyone, everyday.

The Llantwit Food Project began in October 2020 when key partners came together to explore what the barriers are to accessing good food in Llantwit Major. Through conversations with local community members and experts, the group began to build a picture of what could be done to improve this. Thanks to funding from the national lottery, we are now putting these ideas into action to make a positive impact on the local community.

Whilst food is the anchor of this project, it also seeks to cultivate many other benefits to the local community. For example, increasing community connectedness, raising awareness of where to get support, and ensuring local people are receiving the help they are entitled to. You can expect to see:

• • A monthly community hub at the CF61 centre, including cookery demos, equipment loans and face-to-face support.
  • Better signposting and information about local services, events and support.
  • A mobile food pantry service piloted.

Good Food is food that is healthy and nutritious.

Eating well and having a healthy diet can help us all feel our best and make a big difference to our long-term health, reducing our risk of some long-term conditions such as coronary heart disease.

Eating and drinking the right food and fluid to stay healthy is important through our lives for both our physical and mental health and wellbeing. This means eating a wide variety of foods in the right proportions to make sure we have all the nutrients we need. You can find out more about what we mean by ‘good food’ by checking out the Eat Well guide which is a pictorial guide showing the proportion and types of food that are needed to make up a healthy balanced diet.

Llantwit Major, like many other communities across the Vale, is home to a valuable and dedicated group of individuals and groups working to ensure their residents have access to good food. Nonetheless, it still faces the same challenges associated with food access as the rest of the Vale. Together with community members from across Llantwit Major, we aim to collect stories and experiences to build an in-depth understanding of what can be done to improve access to food. This pilot project will inform how we can potentially expand this work beyond Llantwit Major to ensure that everybody has a good meal everyday.