Bristol Community Meals Consultation

No decision has been made. We want to hear your views before we decide what to do. 

What the service does

Community Meals is a food delivery and wellbeing service supporting people in Bristol who are unable to make meals by themselves.

The service provides healthy, affordable food in line with the One City Food Equality Strategy 2022-2032 and Food Equality Action Plan. It helps people to stay safe, secure and independent and less isolated and carries out welfare checks to make sure people are safe and well in their homes.

As of June 2026, the service supports 289 people: 156 people who were referred into the service by Adult Social Care and partner organisations, and an additional 133 people who access the service privately.

The service is not regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Background to the proposals

In November 2025, Bristol City Council ran a survey to ask people using the service, their families and carers, for feedback.

People told us the following things work well:

• the quality of meals is good, and they are delivered in a timely manner
• regular contact provides reassurance

People also suggested the following improvements:

• a wider variety of meals
• more consistent delivery times
• meals arriving at the right temperature more consistently

The council has looked at the service several times over the last four years. The service costs more to run than it receives from meal payments. As a result, the council currently provides funding to cover the difference. This will be approximately £280,000 in tax year 2026 to 27.

Of the 289 people who receive meals, only 10 have them funded through Adult Social Care. Everyone else pays for their own meals. The charge does not cover the full cost of providing the service.

Community Meals currently charges £6.48 per meal for people referred by Adult Social Care. People who pay for the service themselves are charged £7.78 per meal.

The cost of providing a meal is £13.54 per meal, compared with an England average of £5.57 (National Association of Care Catering - NACC).

Although cheaper food delivery options exist, there isn’t currently another organisation available in Bristol that would deliver food and check on people in their homes (provide a welfare check).

The Adult Social Care Vision for Bristol and the Corporate Strategy 2025-2030 (bristol.gov.uk) highlights the importance of early intervention and prevention. The current Community Meals service supports these ambitions through the welfare checks it provides.

While people who use the service value the meals and checks it provides, evidence about the wider impact of the service across the Bristol population is limited because the service currently reaches a relatively small proportion of residents.

The options in in this consultation have been developed based on available evidence.