A guest editorial by Fiona Hollis

On a housing estate a few minutes from Westfield, an old post office now serves three-course lunches for £3, made almost entirely from food that would otherwise have gone to waste. Created and delivered by UKHarvest and Hammersmith & Fulham Borough Council, City Harvest has delivered 45 tonnes of that food to Nourish Hub since opening in 2022, enough for more than 107,000 meals. This is what that partnership has built. A kitchen built from surplus

Nourish Hub sits at 1 St Ann’s Road on the Edward Woods Estate in Shepherd’s Bush. Before it opened, the site was a row of five empty shops that had become a magnet for antisocial behaviour. Today it is a community food hub, with kitchens for cooking and cookery courses, event and meeting spaces and a warm sense of community connection, run by the food rescue charity UKHarvest.

The Hub was created as part of Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s Nourish Project, a £2.3 million programme to end food poverty and tackle the climate emergency in the borough. It was backed by a further £1.1 million from the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund. Queen Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, and UKHarvest’s patron, formally opened it in February 2022.

The idea is simple. Good food should be available to everyone, regardless of income. Lunch is served Monday to Friday, and a three-course vegetarian meal costs £3, with the option to give more. The same kitchen cooks meals on wheels for older residents, delivered by cargo bike, and teaches children and adults to cook well on a budget.

What 45 tonnes looks like

A community kitchen is only as good as the food coming through its door. Since Nourish Hub joined City Harvest’s network in 2022, City Harvest’s vans have kept it stocked with surplus from farms, wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers across London.

Every kilogram is food that was fit to eat but at risk of being thrown away. Instead, it became lentil soups, stuffed peppers and banana bread, served at communal tables to anyone who walks in.

The social value figure goes further than the food itself. City Harvest estimates that every kilogram it redistributes creates around £3.55 of positive impact for the people who eat it and the businesses that donate it. Across 45 tonnes, that is roughly £161,000 of value returned to West London.

A two-way exchange

The partnership does not run in one direction. Once a week, City Harvest and UKHarvest swap surplus food, with UKHarvest’s team delivering to and collecting from City Harvest’s depot in Acton. Each charity passes on what the other can use best, so less food sits unused and more of it reaches people quickly.

Over the past two years, the weekly exchange has moved 172.5 tonnes of food between the two charities, the equivalent of more than 410,000 meals. It is a working example of the cooperation the sector says it needs: two independent redistributors treating each other as partners rather than competitors.

“UKHarvest and City Harvest have held a close relationship for many years, exchanging food on a weekly basis to help alleviate stock control issues and provide variety to community partners. Working with UKHarvest is straightforward and as a reliable partner, we are grateful for the relationship. Thank you UKHarvest, here’s to many more years of sharing food!”

Ben Logue, Operations Manager, City Harvest

UKHarvest’s London Head of Operations, Andreea Rizea explains the impact of the food shared,

“Our relationship with City Harvest has helped shape Nourish Hub into what it is today. By working together, City Harvest and UKHarvest are helping ensure that more good food reaches the people and communities who can benefit from it.

As well as providing food for meals, the donations support our free NOURISHed Cookery Courses, where we help people build confidence and skills in the kitchen.

City Harvest and UKHarvest work towards a shared purpose: preventing good food from going to waste while using it to nourish, connect and support our community.”

More than a meal

Food poverty is rarely just about an empty fridge. It is about choosing between heating and eating, about skipped meals going unnoticed, and about the loneliness that often comes with both. Nourish Hub tackles all three at once.

In 2024, UKHarvest asked the people who use the Hub what difference it makes to them. Their answers, published in the report Our Hub, Your Voice, were striking:

• Healthier diets.1% of visitors said they were eating more nutritious food since they started coming.
• Less money pressure.9% said the Hub had helped ease financial difficulties they were already facing.
• New connections.5% of residents, and 92.3% of volunteers, said they had met new people there.

One resident described how, before finding the Hub, they had simply eaten whatever they could afford or whatever came in a food parcel. That shift, from getting by to eating well, is what surplus food can do when it lands in the right hands.

The Hub’s volunteers see the same thing from the other side of the counter. As one put it, the biggest impact is “making them feel connected to others.” The Hub has since added free shared-reading sessions for women, a book exchange and board games, so that lunch becomes a reason to stay rather than a transaction.

Volunteering changes lives too. More than 50 volunteers give 30 to 35 hours a day between them, and their stories show how far that can lead. One began at a free cookery class, went on to train as a barista and now has paid work in a community kitchen. Another, recovering from depression after a bereavement, found purpose and friendship in the kitchen team. A young woman on the autism spectrum used a work placement at the Hub to build the confidence to pursue a career in hospitality.

Beyond West London

Nourish Hub’s reach already runs past the borough boundary. Its Notting Dale Community Cookbook gathered 24 recipes from residents, schools, community groups and charities across the neighbourhood, celebrating the area’s food cultures while showing people how to cook well and waste less.

Its bigger lesson is about how the food system can work. In its 2025 report, Hand in Hand, City Harvest spoke to food redistribution charities in eight countries. Their conclusion was clear: no single organisation can solve food poverty and food waste alone. Nourish Hub is that principle in practice:

1. Farms and food businesses give their surplus instead of binning it.
2. City Harvest collects it and delivers it free, safely and at scale.
3. UKHarvest collects and turns surplus into meals, skills and community at Nourish Hub.
4. Hammersmith & Fulham Council provides the space and long-term backing.

City Harvest and UKHarvest were both founding members of Xcess, the Independent Food Redistribution Network. Through it, independent charities share surplus, contacts and know-how so that no good food goes to waste. The sector has now gone further, committing to triple the amount of food redistributed across the UK over the next decade together with larger charities such as Felix and The Bread and Butter Thing.

The Hub shows what that ambition means on the ground. A partnership between a redistributor, a community kitchen and a local council can be repeated on any estate, in any borough, anywhere surplus food and need sit side by side. In London, that is almost everywhere.

What comes next

Need is still rising. City Harvest has more than 300 charities on its waiting list, and organisations like Nourish Hub depend on a steady flow of good food to keep their doors open. Here is how you can help:

• Eat there. Lunch at Nourish Hub, 1 St Ann’s Road, W11, Monday to Friday from 12pm to 3pm. Every £3 meal supports the Hub’s work.
• Donate surplus food. If your business has food it cannot sell, City Harvest will collect it for free and get it to people who need it.
• Every £1 donated delivers multiple meals’ worth of food to London communities.
• Both City Harvest and Nourish Hub welcome volunteers in the kitchen, the warehouse and on the road.

45 tonnes of food, one estate, and a lot of people who now eat better and know their neighbours. Imagine what the same partnership could do across the rest of London.