Football fans have five practical ideas to end food poverty in the UK | OneFootball

What does it mean to be a football supporter in the 21st century? A new book from Alex Timperley of MCFC Fans Foodbank Support – ‘For the Love: How Football Supporters Can Change the World’ – tries to answer that question.

It examines what our clubs really are, what supporters are up against and how we can organise effectively against billionaire owners and powerful broadcasters. Most importantly, it shows how the same tactics, cooperation and solidarity can be harnessed to reestablish the link between football and its communities to transform life for working-class people up and down the country.

This extract focuses on the formation of Fans Supporting Foodbanks, and the plan to end food poverty in the UK entirely…

How was Fans Supporting Foodbanks born?

It may surprise you to learn that Fans Supporting Foodbanks was inspired by former Premier League chairman Richard Scudamore. Sort of. He didn’t mean to inspire a national movement to end poverty in the UK, but inadvertently managed to do so anyway.

In 2015, Dave Kelly and Ian Byrne (Everton and Liverpool supporters, respectively) attended a meeting between the Premier League and various supporter groups. Up for discussion was the cap on away ticket prices as part of the ‘Twenty’s Plenty’ campaign.

Scudamore held court and went to great lengths to talk about how philanthropic most of the football clubs in the Premier League were. According to Everton representative Dave Kelly, he talked about, “how the clubs have done lots of really good charity work around the communities. And he implied that while they were doing all this magnificent work, he didn’t particularly see the fans doing anything.”

Now here’s where we enter bizarro world. Was Scudamore actually right? Dave and Ian Byrne, Liverpool supporter and now MP for Liverpool West Derby, remember getting the train back from London together and coming to the conclusion that this might be an opportunity to do some good above anything else. They didn’t know exactly what they’d do, but it was time to do…something. Dave then asked the key question which led to where we are today:

“Why don’t we do a joint fan initiative?”

Fans Supporting Foodbanks was born.

A wheelie bin full of chip papers

The first collection in Liverpool was carried out by the Fans Supporting Foodbanks founders Ian Byrne, Dave Kelly and Robbie Daniels, along with a small crew of helpful souls. They had a wheelie bin and little else. By the end of the collection, Dave recalls it probably had more chip papers in than donations. But the seed had been planted, and 10 years on it has grown deep, enduring roots in Liverpool and the rest of the UK.

Today, the original Fans Supporting Foodbanks group does so much more than collect donations outside Liverpool and Everton. Alongside the tonnes of food they supply to foodbanks around the city, they’ve held breakfast clubs for the homeless and operate a range of food pantries in Liverpool and nearby St. Helens.

These are different to foodbanks in a few key ways. First, people pay a small weekly subscription to access them. Second, they can choose the food they are getting, like in a supermarket. Each person can have a certain amount of items which outweigh the cost of their subscription many times over. It’s all healthy, fresh food and the pantries themselves are a good laugh. People go to chat, relax for a bit, meet other people and enjoy their company. It’s not a handout, it’s community solidarity. It’s dignity and respect for people who so often get neither from the society we live in.

“I think one of the biggest achievements is switching to do the pantries,” says Ian. “The money that kick-started that was from when we all collectively rallied against the Premier League trying to charge pay-per-view during Covid. All that money came from people donating instead of paying the Premier League. That gave us the ability to buy the equipment to set up the food pantries, which are now running extremely successfully.

“Embedding them in the communities is showing the value of football, Everton and Liverpool working together to help the most vulnerable in society has had a huge impact right across the board. I think that’s showing football supporters in a brilliant light, and it’s left a huge impression on the city when people come together, do the right thing and put aside those sectarian divides.

“I love nothing better than going to Everton. I walk down there and nobody says a dicky bird because they know why you’re there and what you’re doing. Dave and Robbie get the same at Liverpool when they turn up. You’re seen as doing something absolutely for the public good.”

One day, that public good may extend to every single person in the UK. The overarching goal of Fans Supporting Foodbanks is to get the Right to Food embedded in British law to end food poverty for good. The results of the decisions made by politicians in recent decades are miserable. The Trussell Trust distributed 2.9 million emergency food parcels in 2024/25, an increase of more than 140% in a decade. Research from the House of Commons Library in 2025 shows a total of 7.5 million people – 11% of the UK’s population – experience food poverty each year. Tragically, 18% of all children have suffered. That means the youngest and most vulnerable among us fare the worst of all. Whatever your politics, the numbers are black and white. We are failing in the most awful way that we could possibly fail.

Fixing all that might sound fanciful, but the Right to Food campaign championed and led by Fans Supporting Foodbanks offers concrete solutions built on key principles which are both morally correct and deliverable in five practical ways:

· Universal free school meals. No child should go hungry and the Right to Food campaign calls for free school meals for every child.

· Government to state how much of minimum wages and benefits (on which people are expected to live) is for food. The Right to Food Campaign wants the Government to reveal how much money is factored in for food when setting minimum/living wages and benefits.

· Independent enforcement of legislation. Right to Food legislation must be accompanied by oversight and enforcement powers granted to a new independent regulatory body that will hold the Government to account.

· Community Kitchens. The Right to Food Campaign believes Community Kitchens provide a workable solution to food poverty. The government should fund dining clubs and ‘meals-on-wheels’ services for the elderly and vulnerable, school holiday meals for those most in need and cookery clubs for the wider community.

· Ensured food security. The government must ensure food security and take this into account when setting competition, planning, transport, local government and all other policies.

Those are only the headlines, but they give a flavour of the direction of travel. If the Right to Food is brought into UK law, it will be fair to say that organised football supporters will have made the most significant impact on poverty in the UK we have ever seen. The idea may sound utopian, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Fans Supporting Foodbanks have already achieved impossible things. Just over 10 years ago the idea that football supporters might save thousands of people from hunger would have been considered absurd. Now, it’s a fact of life in towns and cities up and down the UK.

The next step is also possible. Dozens of local councils are signed up to the campaign thanks to the work of football supporters, and pressure is building for a national solution to poverty. Partner organisations including Sustain, Just Fair, Nourish and the Institute of Health & Society at Newcastle University are on board.

This is the solution to food poverty in the UK, and football supporters are playing a huge role in making it happen.