Mayor reinstates funding to local food banks following Slice investigation
After an investigation by the Slice revealed that Tower Hamlets’ funding to its Food Hub had been drastically cut overnight, the budget has finally been reinstated.
Funding for the Tower Hamlets Food Hub (THFH), which was slashed by as much as 80% without warning in November, has been officially reinstated following an investigation by the Slice.
The THFH is the Council’s food delivery system for people who cannot afford or access sufficient food. The new budget for the 2025/26 financial year is £885,000, the highest the hub’s funding has ever been.
Each week, the THFH delivers food and other necessities to more than 80 voluntary and community sector organisations across the borough, including Globe Primary School, Bow Food Bank, and Al Aqsa Mosque. The organisations then redistribute the food to community members.
According to 2022 statistics from the Local Government Association, the hub feeds roughly 10,000 families a week in Tower Hamlets.
In November 2024, a Slice investigation revealed that funding for the hub had been slashed overnight. None of the organisations the Slice spoke to had been warned that their regular food deliveries would be severely reduced, and the residents who rely on the THFH services were left in the lurch.
When asked for comment by the Slice, the Council responded, ‘There is no reduction in the funding for families in need,’ which was not true.
As holidays approached in December 2024, THFH members still didn’t have their regular food deliveries back, or explanations as to why the funding had been cut. Residents, foodbank recipients and volunteers gathered outside the town hall to protest the cut and formed an ongoing campaign to restore the funding.
Campaign organisers told the Slice that the Council had ignored repeated requests for meetings. Initial attempts to host an e-petition on the Council site were rejected, and the campaigners were told there had been no reduction in funding.
Labour Councillor Marc Francis raised the issue with the Monitoring Officer in early February 2025, citing the Slice’s investigation. At this time, the decision to cut funding had still not been published by the Council, meaning it couldn’t be officially challenged.
A ‘call-in’ was submitted in mid-February about the restricted funding to the Overview & Scrutiny Committee, and the e-petition from the campaign was finally published on the Council site, with over 400 signatures.
Eventually, Mayor Lutfur Rahman addressed the controversy during the February 26 Council meeting on the 2025/2026 budget. The Mayor said: ‘I am extremely disappointed that my office had been misinformed by some in this Council and told me there had been no reduction in resources. Now that I have been made aware of this issue, I have ensured that the funding is brought back to the level I increased it to when I was elected in 2022, and I have requested a review of the service to make sure this oversight never happens again.’
The final budget for 2025/2026 of £885,000 for the THFH was later confirmed in an Aspire amendment to a Labour motion, and is the highest budget the food hub has ever been allocated.
The amendment stated that the initial budget cuts were due to internal confusion around funding streams and delays to the Household Support Fund (HSF) from the central government. Money from the HSF is partially used to fund the THFH.
Councillor Francis said: ‘It is really good that the Mayor has accepted Labour’s call for the funding to the Food Hub to be reinstated for 2025/26.
However, it is frustrating that no additional funding was eventually made available in 2024/25 beyond what the new Government had given Tower Hamlets Council in September through the Household Support Fund.
Equally worryingly, the Mayor’s claims in this amendment that the delay was caused by the Government simply doesn’t add up. Ministers announced this extra funding back in September. The delay was on the part of the Mayor and his own team in signing off how it would be spent.’
Organisers of the campaign to restore the foodbank funding said: ‘We believe this was a campaign success by the foodbanks in the borough.
We welcome Mayor Rahman’s announcement of a budget of £850,000 for Tower Hamlets Food Hub, and we look forward to cooperating with the Office of the Mayor and the Cost of Living Team to ensure greater food security for those most in need.’
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