Good Food Nation Planning Toolkit

Everything you need to develop and publish your Local Good Food Nation Plan

Explore the toolkit

Stage 1

Drafting

Stage 2

Consulting

Stage 3

Implementing

Introduction

In this short video, Prof. Mary Brennan and Tilly Robinson-Miles from the University of Edinburgh’s Living Good Food Nation Lab introduce the Toolkit.

  • Why it was created to support Scotland’s Good Food Nation plans
  • Who it’s for
  • How it helps Relevant Authorities develop their Good Food Nation Plans with confidence, not from scratch

What’s new

Resources

Ready-to-use documents to support every stage of your Good Food Nation plan, from stakeholder engagement to final submission.

See all resources

Frequently asked questions

Have an unanswered question? Get in touch using our Contact us page.

The Good Food Nation Planning Toolkit supports Relevant Authorities (and their planning partners) by outlining, and providing a curated set of resources to support, the process, people and associated tasks, milestones and timelines, involved in developing Local Good Food Nation (GFN) Plans.

The toolkit acts as a curated information repository to support the work of planning, and publishing, Local Good Food Nation Plans. It provides a detailed timeline of the process (and associated tasks and milestones) required for developing Local Good Food Nation Plans. These resources are broken down and arranged by key stages and associated tasks and milestones.

This Good Food Nation Planning Toolkit is primarily aimed at those leading, and working, on Local Good Food Nation planning, including officials from the 46 Scottish Relevant Authorities (32 Local Authorities and 14 territorial Health Boards), responsible for preparing, drafting, and publishing the first Local Good Food Nation Plans as per the legislative requirement outlined in the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022.

We also expect that other public bodies and officials, civil society organisations (including coalitions/alliances), community groups/organisations, networks (business/regional development/enterprise/tourism), professional representative bodies (including those representing Relevant Authorities) and other interested parties will also find this Good Food Nation Planning Toolkit, and the resources contained within, helpful to them in contributing to, and influencing, Local Good Food Nation planning throughout Scotland.

The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 is framework legislation that requires Scottish Ministers to prepare and publish a National Good Food Nation Plan. Relevant Authorities (Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities and 14 territorial Health Boards) also have a new responsibility to produce Local Good Food Nation Plans.

For more information, please see our GFN 101 Briefing and the Understand Section of the Toolkit.

The Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022 requires Scottish Ministers and Relevant Authorities to prepare and publish Good Food Nation plans.

‘Relevant Authorities’ are defined in this legislation, as per the original wording, as: territorial Scottish Health Boards and Scottish Local Authorities. There is a clause that allows for Scottish Ministers, in the future, to specify that other public bodies can be included but though this has not been exercised for the first round of Good Food Nation planning.

As of September 2026, Relevant Authorities, for the first round of Local Good Food Nation planning, are the 14 Territorial Scottish Health Boards and 32 Scottish Local Authorities.

For more information, see the Understand Section of the Toolkit

Sections 10 to 18 set out the requirements of the Act for Relevant Authorities. Section 10 must be enacted for the provisions related to Relevant Authorities to come into force. As of September 2026, these requirements are not yet in force.

All 32 Scottish Local Authorities and 14 territorial Scottish Health Boards were formally written to in March 2026 and issued with 12 months advance notice of Section 10 coming into force on 1st April 2027 and that accordingly the first set of Local Good Food Nation plans would be published by the 1st April 2028.

For more in-depth information, see the Understand Section of the Toolkit.

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