Defra, Environment Agency, FSA
The rest of the grant book
In one sentence
Not the border. Still on the taxpayer circuit that feeds the same NGO layer.
Defra, the Environment Agency and the Food Standards Agency do not run the Channel. They run grant books that the same charity layer bids into. In June 2025 Defra offered £13.6 million to twelve food-redistribution charities (FareShare consortium more than £9.2 million, City Harvest, Food in Community). Those networks supply food banks and destitution projects whose caseload is now heavily asylum. The Environment Agency and FSA have smaller community, inclusion and outreach pots — not AIRE-scale contracts. A 2025 Home Office answer found no HO funding for Care4Calais. These three are listed because the wider public estate keeps appearing as co-funder of food, “inclusion” and community programmes that migration NGOs sit inside. The main tap is still the Home Office, councils, the NHS and legal aid.
This government’s Plan for Change is acting on food poverty … ensuring more good food ends up on plates and not in bins.
What they did
Jun 2025
Defra £13.6 million
Twelve food-redistribution charities. Surplus farm food into the destitution network, including asylum projects.
accounts
EA and FSA
No smoking-gun border contract. Community and inclusion grants on the same NGO circuit. Listed because that is how the sector was built: one public book, then many.
This file is about public money, not a Commons division. The grant table is on the Money page.
Sources: Defra, Jun 2025; PQ 83601; 360Giving / GrantNav pattern