Highland Council Seeking Views on Growing Our Future

Residents and businesses across Highland are being encouraged to provide their views on The Highland Council’s draft food growing strategy, Growing Our Future, which has been officially opened for consultation today.   

Under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, every local authority in Scotland is required to develop a food growing strategy to help support and encourage more local food growing amongst communities.  

In developing Growing Our Future, a range of different consultation exercises were undertaken, including a series of interviews and workshops with key Council officers, a suite of local community engagement sessions, as well as a community food growing survey to identify the key opportunities as well as barriers to growing your own across the region. 

The Highland Council’s Climate Change Officer Keith Masson said: “We are delighted to finally publish Growing Our Future for consultation .  It has become clear whilst developing the Council’s  food growing strategy and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, that there is increasing appetite across Highland for more “grow your own” schemes and initiatives, and this consultation gives Highland residents the opportunity to let us know if our strategy and action plan will help make that happen.” 

The consultation can be found here, and will be open until Monday 23rd November.