The public sector spends £1.8bn on food and catering services each year, mainly in schools, hospitals, prisons and staff canteens. The Government is committed to using this buying power to help deliver a sustainable food and farming industry.
The priority objectives for the PSFPI are:
- to raise production and process standards
- to increase tenders from small and local producers
- to increase consumption of healthy and nutritious food
- to reduce adverse environmental impacts of production and supply
- to increase capacity of small and local suppliers to meet demand
The Public Health White Paper, published in November 2004 shared these objectives. It underlined the need for better nutritional standards in schools, and that a healthier diet would improve academic performance and reduce the incidence of heart disease and diabetes for pupils in later life.
Partners are working with Government Office for the East of England (GO-East) to encourage the development of producer groups and viable local supply chains predominately into schools and hospitals, including schools wishing to take on their own meal provision. In parallel, work is being done with caterers and food procurers to help create a greater demand for contracts with local producers.
In order to coordinate this work, a regional facilitator was appointed in May 2007. East Anglia Food Link (EAFL) are an organisation that have been working in this field for several years and are driving PSFPI activity within the region.
In the region as a whole, local authorities are seeking to achieve efficiencies in their procurement practices whilst delivering against sustainability objectives. The PSFPI can contribute to these aims.
The National Audit Office published a report Smarter Food Procurement in the Public Sector, focussing on how the public sector could increase the efficiency of food procurement, while making progress towards Government objectives of increasing sustainability and nutritional quality. The main recommendations of this report were that significant efficiency savings could be made if there was a more collaborative approach to food procurement as well as to it’s supply. This has provided more focus for engagement with many major players.
The Cabinet Office has recently commissioned a report entitled Food: an analysis of the issues which was published in January 2008. This report highlights a number of areas where work should be focussed.
A project was commenced in Autumn 2007 to work with Suffolk schools to achieve a greater degree of local food going into their meals, expanding this into a whole school approach to food, embedding learning and food skills into the curriculum as set out in the Food For Life programme being run with Lottery Funding. This work is helping to contribute to the aims of the Year of Food and Farming within Suffolk schools as well as helping define the feasibility of a food hub in the county which would play a key role in the school meal supply chain.
