Our Year in Review

This year we took a closer look at what’s on our plates to uncover the true cost of the UK’s food system. What we found was shocking.

Totalling up the side-effects – obesity, pollution, and more – at £26 billion, our food costs us all an extra 28% on top the amount we pay at the till.

From inefficiency and environmental damage, to the support of bad jobs and inequality, it’s failing across the board in what a successful food system should deliver: wellbeing and sustainability in a socially just way.

We presented our findings at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, where industry experts and journalists wanted the scoop.

NEF and our supporters know this unhealthy and unsustainable mess is simply more evidence of a wider problem – an economic system that has lost its way.

Poverty forces too many of us to compromise on quality when it comes to our diet. Life’s treadmill pushes people towards time-efficient fast food. A fixation on GDP growth sidelines the things that really matter in life.

NEF is the only think-tank in a position to come up with joined-up solutions to these deep-rooted problems, and on our journey we also uncovered many stories of real success.

Meeting with innovative farmers all over Europe, we learned about circular, resource-efficient food supply chains in Germany; how good jobs can strengthen and support vulnerable local people in Spain; and the principles of farming in collaboration – not competition – with nature in Italy. Here in the UK we experienced the cultural and community dimensions of farming.

Changing the dominant system won’t be easy, but we’ve never been afraid to challenge mainstream thinking – be it finance, fisheries, or farming.

We’re grateful to everyone who made this work possible, including the Bielenberg Family Foundation and NEF supporters.

Money is a tool that should be working for us, not the other way around. But in 2008, the financial crisis proved that the conventional monetary system was actually working against the best interests of our society and the economy.

NEF has shown that money has the potential to unlock a range of social, economic, and environmental benefits. Our economics textbook on money and banking has influenced politicians, economists, and academics alike, while our innovation in local currency design, developing the Brixton Pound, has helped to put this thinking into practice.

This year we published People Powered Money – the ultimate step-by-step guide, unravelling the mysteries behind our every-day understanding of money, and outlining how local communities can kick-start their own currencies.

Working with seven international partner organisations, over the last four years we’ve travelled across Europe, to develop six of the most exciting pilot currency schemes. We wanted to help measure their progress towards the social and economic goals they were designed to achieve.

Whether it was supporting smaller businesses or giving local people access to services that they would otherwise be excluded from – we found that redesigning money really can work for us.

This project is an exciting step forward, empowering local communities with the knowledge and skills they need to challenge a financial system that isn’t working. We’re extremely proud that our contribution to this project was recognised with a nomination for the RegioStars Awards for ‘The most inspiring and innovative European projects co-funded by the EU’s Cohesion policy.’

NEF’s work on the Community Currencies in Action project was made possible with financial assistance from the European Union and the Tudor Trust.

We’re stronger together than we are alone: that’s the principle behind our shared welfare state.

But just as our National Health Service was created in response to huge social and economic challenges, the deeply entrenched problems we face today mean we need a new framework for what we expect of our government and how we live together.

This year, NEF launched its proposals for a new social settlement. It builds on the strengths of the post-war settlement, and sets out ways of tackling our distinct twenty-first century problems.

There are those who say we can no longer afford the fundamental protection our welfare state offers. We disagree. At a packed launch event back in February, we explained that with a rebalancing of our work and time, a concerted effort to unlock our shared human resources in society and in public services, strong social security, and an industrial strategy that puts decent jobs and eco-social policies front and centre, we can plan for prosperity and social justice without relying on economic growth.

We live in a changed world, but the fundamental challenge remains the same – how to achieve the best for ourselves and others, while protecting the environment on which we all depend. Our new social settlement proves it is possible to meet the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same.

NEF’s work on a new social settlement was supported by Oxfam and NEF supporters.

Seven years on from the global financial crisis and not enough has changed. This year, our Financial System Resilience Index placed the UK bottom of the league table when comparing how vulnerable G7 economies are to another crash.

Our warnings made headlines in the Daily Mail and the Guardian, while our team explained the issue live on BBC Radio 4 and the Jeremy Vine Show. Westminster sat up and took notice, too, with the findings referenced in parliament.

Our main message? A strong system must be diverse – whether it’s a natural ecosystem or a banking system.

This year the government began a reckless sell-off of the publicly owned Royal Bank of Scotland. Returning the bank to the private sector is a huge mistake – not just because of the massive financial loss to those of us who bailed it out, but the loss of a unique opportunity to fix our broken banking system once and for all.

We drew up a proposal to turn RBS into a network of 130 truly local banks. Creating a bank for every city and county, we crunched the numbers and calculated a potential £30 billion boost to the economy, on top of the increased resilience in the event of another crisis.

In co-operation with top campaigners Move Your Money and Sum of Us, we launched a petition urging the Chancellor to rethink his sale plans. More than 100,000 people have signed up so far to show their support.

A huge media splash followed: the Mirror, Independent, Times, and Herald among the papers covering the story, with Sky News, BBC Scotland, and BBC 5 Live’s Wake Up To Money all wanting interviews.

After influencing a number of political parties’ manifestos, we will continue to push this important work – our recent opinion polling shows over 58% of the UK public is behind us.

A big thank you to the Friends Provident Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, The Tedworth Charitable Trust, and NEF supporters for funding this work.