Challenges and Opportunities in Collaborative Cross‐Sectoral (Healthy) Urban Food Environment Planning

The need to manage change in local food environments is increasingly evident in local government policies, including the demand for an integrated and “whole systems” approach. Land‐use planning is often used as a mechanism to promote health—both in the creation of healthy environments and the regulation of unhealthy food environments—for example, through facilitating urban food growing and managing the location and number of unhealthy food outlets. In England, the government recently strengthened the ability of planners to promote health, including through food environments, by publishing a renewed National Planning Policy Framework. It also launched a UK‐wide Food Strategy in 2025, seeking to tackle wider food system challenges. This indicates an intention by the government to strengthen food policy leadership, taking a system lens. To date, this has been predominantly led by local government and civil society action via local food policies and healthy planning programmes. Critical to the success of future action is a better understanding of the complexities and barriers to integrated work to deliver healthier food environments. This article reflects on insights gained from qualitative pre‐Covid‐19 research exploring three local authorities in England and their actors involved with integrated food policies and action. In‐depth interviews elicit the perspectives of key stakeholders, including planners and public health officers, and shed light on some important underlying challenges. Stakeholders revealed a range of constraints affecting the ability to enact integrated policy, including conflicting framing and worldviews of food environments, challenges of ongoing organisational and leadership change, and the long timeframes needed to deliver meaningful impact. Reviewed in the light of more recent literature and policy, the insights gained reflect persistent barriers and constraints that are still of relevance today and should be addressed if implementation of integrated policy towards food environment change on the ground is to be realised.