Wednesday, September 23 2009
Transport planner JMP has piloted a new standard to help planners to measure how far people should have to travel from their homes to buy healthy food, in particular fruit and vegetables.
The new standard, developed for the Department of Health West Midlands, improves upon previous ways planners measured access to food and does not confine itself merely to shops and town centres and ‘fresh’ food.
It brings the focus on all places that sell fruit and vegetables, such as markets, farm shops, petrol filling stations and pubs in rural communities that sell produce. And it asks councils to measure the percentage of households within 20 minutes of outlets selling fruit and vegetables by walking, cycling or public transport.
Primarily the standard has been developed for use within the next phase of local transport plans to firmly anchor principles of healthy lifestyles within accessibility planning.
A region-wide mapping exercise has taken place to identify retail outlets likely to sell fruit and vegetables; a first for the West Midlands Accessibility maps. The original data sources will be provided to each local authority to assist them in their plans and strategies for the future.
JMP says that the measurement standard seeks to capture a wider range of food outlets in order that access solutions are not skewed to promoting travel to large out-of-town outlets at the expense of sustaining smaller, community outlets.
The report emphasises that for future food security to be achieved people need to be able to access food without the use of a car. Therefore it is important that access solutions provided do not threaten the sustainability of local outlets.
The consultant adds that unhealthy diets in the West Midlands are most commonly deprived of fruit and vegetables, rather than any other food group.