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Pete's Fruit and Veg with Healthy Start poster

NHS Healthy Start Success

1st September 2023

It has been over 3 months since the launch of Bury Market's NHS Healthy Start campaign, and what a positive impact it has had!

The Bury Market NHS Healthy Start campaign is a scheme that allows parents that are more than 10 weeks pregnant or have a child under 4 to shop with their NHS Healthy Start card at the award-winning Bury Market. It can be used on the stalls Iddon's Fruit and Veg, Pete's Fruit and Veg, and Tom's Bargain Corner, and can be used to buy:

  • Plain liquid cow’s milk
  • Fresh, frozen, and tinned fruit and vegetables
  • Fresh, dried, and tinned pulses
  • Infant formula milk based on cow’s milk

Following on from Bury's achievement of the Bronze Sustainable Food Places Award in 2022 via the Bury Food Partnership, 2023 has solidified Bury as a field leader in the work of Sustainable and Healthy Eating.

This year, the Bury Food Partnership presented how Bury Market became a HS destination at Oxford University Sustainable Food Places conference, and were also represented on the panel for England at the Sustainable Food Places Day of Action this year at Westminster.

Sustain wrote an article about the achievements of the Bury Food Partnership, and this was followed by a Soil Association trustee visit.

The Bury Food Partnership shared how Bury Market has become a HS destination at the GM Healthy Start Task Force, which lead to Manchester, Tameside, Bolton councils requesting to join the next market tour. Bury Market and the Bury Food Partnership recently hosted a market tour, that was attended by Bradford Market team, Leeds PH, Leeds Uni and Centre for Food Policy, London Uni, Manchester, Tameside, and Bolton councils.

We received some amazing feedback from some of the attendees, validating the hard work and commitment the Bury Food Partnership and Bury Market have given to this great cause:

“Thank you so much for the tour yesterday. It was really useful, and it was fabulous to see and hear about everything happening in Bury. I’m using your area as an area of good practice.” (Bolton Council)

“Thanks for yesterday, was great to hear all the incredible things that you have going on with Healthy Start. My biggest takeaway from yesterday was that I was inspired of you to approach Markets, and then for them to see the added value that market traders accepting Healthy Start cards would bring to the wider market scene, and then for them to translate that to the traders. Also saw the value to Healthy Start of you having such close links with DWP, which is helping with the uptake. I’m sure that there are conversations that we can and will have with our own market colleagues, and with our own DWP link person, so the visit was both inspiring and will lead to some actions here in Manchester.” (Manchester City Council)

“It was a fascinating day learning about all the work done in Bury, both with the market and with embedding HS into the job centre systems. It was especially interesting to hear from Anne (DWP) how important the local relationships and partnerships are for getting things like Healthy Start on the radar of the people who are in a key position to ensure families know about this important scheme.” (Centre for Food Policy, London University)

“Really good to meet and hear from you about the Healthy Start project and I’m sure we can take any learnings and introduce similar in our market.” (Bradford Market)

Pete's Fruit and Veg have also offered 10% off to anybody who uses their NHS Healthy Start Card at their stall.