In December this magazine revealed its list of the ‘Most Influential’ people in public sector catering, as chosen by a panel of judges.
On a bright day in late January those named gathered at the House of Commons to share thoughts, experiences and ideas about the joint challenges they face. Importantly, the idea was to draw out some actions and potential solutions to take forward through 2025.
Funding pressures
Opening the discussion, Jayne Jones, chair of the PSC Alliance, went straight to the heart of the funding pressures faced by the industry. She highlighted the disparities in funding between the different parts of the public sector, but also between England and the devolved nations.
She wondered whether it was damaging or fair to draw comparisons, saying: “If you put prison catering alongside NHS catering, for instance, you’re not measuring like with like.”
Jayne Jones added: “As an Alliance we should be doing better to understand the differences and articulate that more clearly, because in the public mind, there’s very little difference in what we do. I think as a public sector and within our own organisations, we could and should be doing more to understand and articulate that better.”
She pointed to the upcoming challenges of additional reporting requirements and the National Insurance increase, and asked if there were innovative ways to stretch the funding further, highlighting how damaging the cost pressures are proving to some local authorities and smaller independent catering companies.
Judith Gregory, chair of LACA, detailed the disparity in school meal funding across the UK, noting England’s lower rate of £2.58 compared to Scotland and Wales receiving more than £3 per meal. She is concerned that rising food costs coupled with the National Insurance increase will impact standards in some schools and that caterers will not be able to provide a service for smaller contracts.
She said: “We are all as public sector caterers very resourceful, but it’s getting very close to that limit now, where it’s going to really impact on services.”
She pointed to some schools attempting to subsidise a service to ensure that all children could access a nutritious hot meal, and warned: “LACA members are saying that they’re looking at alternative options now in terms of cheaper products, which will inevitably have an impact on the standards.”
Neel Radia, chair of the NACC, spoke about the strain on social care funding, noting the decline of Meals on Wheels services and the challenge of maintaining high standards in care homes with limited budgets.
He said the NACC was working on ways of supporting members and offering solutions to the challenges they face, saying: “We’re looking at what people are using outside our sector and seeing if there are other models that could support our work.”
Iain Robertson, chair of the HCA, emphasised the funding disparities within healthcare where budget allocations differ from trust to trust, potentially leading to inconsistencies in patient meal quality.
However, he added: “Trusts are having to deliver cost improvement plans and I think what we’re seeing is better innovation in how to use the funding more efficiently. Throwing food in the bin is like throwing money in the bin and better use of technology can lead to fewer wasted meals.”
Denise Bean, head of catering at HM Prison Service, described the challenges her staff were facing on a tiny budget of around £3 per day per prisoner, whilst also meeting increasing needs around cultural and medical diets. She highlighted the conflict facing caterers, knowing that good meals have a positive impact on prisoner health and behaviour, but at the same time contending with old kitchen infrastructure in Victorian prisons, and mandatory food suppliers that limited their budgeting opportunities.
She said: “Budget’s a very emotive subject. What we’ve tried to do is pull catering managers together in workshops and share best practice, but also the challenges they’re facing so that we can have that dialogue between us.
“We’re trying to focus on staff professional development, giving them the tools to have the confidence to try new innovative ideas and support for catering managers so they don’t feel so alone.”
Better use of data & operational efficiency
Charles Abraham, director of food platform at Sodexo, highlighted the inconsistencies across the sector, not only in funding but also policy. He pointed to an inequality in standards between different provisions.
He advocated transformation through better use of data and operational efficiency, saying: “It’s about saying, how do we transform our operations and how do we take a different approach, because I think there’s an acceptance funding will never be enough.
“So, how do we change the way we operate? It’s the same in the private sector and public sector.” He also addressed the issue of growth in an industry heavily reliant on people, with the cost that entails.
He highlighted Sodexo’s own recipe bank, saying: “We’re looking at how do we deliver the same or better service using less people? I think that’s where the transformation sits. But it’s also about using data to get better. How do we optimise that and learn from what people are doing?”
But, he warned, that transformation was hampered by an increasing regulatory and reporting requirement.
Richard Thompson, head of public sector food procurement policy at Defra, agreed, saying more data-driven approaches could help demonstrate the economic and social benefits of improved food provision. He said clear evidence could help make the case for better funding, saying: “We are having to be smart and data-driven and we have to be very careful in how we deploy limited funding. So the more evidence that we can provide, the easier it is as officials to make the case with government for change.”
New Labour Government
Picking up on this idea, Nadim Ednan-Laperouse, co-founder and trustee of the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, urged the sector to take advantage of the Labour majority in Government and the number of new, younger MPs who ‘have a strong sense of equity’.
He felt they would be open to the right messaging around the provision of healthy, nutritious meals, especially to young people on whom the future of the UK hangs. He suggested ‘thinking like ministers’ and present evidence of how public sector catering helps Government address issues it has committed to tackle, such as health inequalities and absenteeism in schools.
Professor Kevin Morgan, an academic in public sector catering, said it would be a positive signal from Government to caterers if Jayne Jones, as chair of the PSC Alliance, was made a member of Defra’s Food and Drink Sector Council. At the moment the public sector voice is represented on the council by services provider Compass UK & Ireland.
“It’s a very low cost, symbolic move, because it seems to me perverse to have a private sector voice as the voice of public sector catering. It’s such a demoralising signal. We’re all trying to raise the profile and the voice of public sector catering, to make the case for the multiple benefits of good nutrition, so I urge you [Defra] to reconsider that position and put a public sector voice on the council.”
Disparity in buying rules
Karen Beech, commercial lead food category with Crown Commercial Service, highlighted the disparity between buying rules applied to the public sector as against those the private sector operated under. She said: “I want to echo that point around consistency of application of the rules, because right at the point of purchasing the raw materials we’re not able to aggregate volume to buy more effectively.
“I’m appealing for some consistency of application of those standards and data is key to that as well.” But she warned: “There is a danger that we try to measure too many things, and then that data doesn’t add value.”
Cost mitigation
Gavin Squires, business development controller for education and healthcare at Bidfood UK, shared his concern that catering customers were now only interested in cost mitigation. He felt the intense financial pressures experienced by caterers - particularly in education - were driving them to ignore the food standards and purchase the cheapest products, for example reduced meat content in sausages or chicken from Thailand. He could foresee school meals services closing because they were unable to deliver with the current funding.
Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers Union, responded with a warning about the impact of low-cost imported food on British farmers, who were unable to compete with products from other nations when they were held to different production standards.
He argued that Government support for public sector food procurement could help sustain domestic agriculture: “I think the ability to tell, in the story to Government, of how and why the budget should be increased for the health of the next generation is absolutely essential.”
Public sector purchasing
Professor Don Bundy, an expert on international school meals, explained how some countries used public sector purchasing and agricultural policy to feed millions of children without importing food, creating growth in the economy and supporting local farmers.
He highlighted how the UK’s diet needed to become more sustainable for the benefit of food security and climate change, noting: “The public food sector is crucial in this because that’s where Government holds the levers of policy and can make the changes that creep out to the rest of society.”
He cited research from UNESCO and the World Bank on the value of school meals in building healthy communities and the importance of child wellbeing to make education effective.
Amanda Pettingill, chair of TUCO, said that it was important to educate young people who would be our future doctors or care home staff on the value of good nutrition in supporting positive outcomes.
Joined up policymaking
And Mo Baines, director of APSE, called for a more joined-up approach to policymaking, where Government could use upcoming opportunities, such as the Public Sector Procurement Act and the NHS Ten-Year Plan, to drive their growth agenda and other key targets, whilst also supporting farmers, the health and care sector and underpinning public food.
She said APSE research suggested that investment in the care economy could create tens of thousands of jobs. But, she added, it was hard for the public sector to get traction in Government when they are all speaking to different departments. She said: “It would be really useful to get a cohesive lobbying approach across all of those different touch points.”
Anna Taylor, executive director of The Food Foundation, cited opportunities within the food strategy to which was Defra committed. She described the Foundation’s work to push for legislation alongside a food strategy that sets out ambitions for the food system. It was recommending a population-level reference diet against which policies could be aligned across different departments.
She said: “While the Government needs the private sector to move significantly on this agenda, and needs to regulate the private sector to do that, they need to lead by example. That means public food has to pave the way by demonstrating how you can create food provision which meets the ambitions we have for shifting our food system in favour of outcomes around health, environment and food security.”
David Holmes of the Food Standards Agency acknowledged the concerns he was hearing in the room and asked, “How can we as the FSA, working with Government, achieve an approach which is helping raise standards, without putting those undue burdens on the industry?”
Professor Morgan, meanwhile, invited caterers to ‘step outside their silos’ to work together on making the case to Government, saying there was a ‘need to change the way that food is viewed and valued’.
Looking at the role of food in the health and wellness of the nation and the increasing burden of diet-related disease, he said: “We are spending more and more on finding a clinical solution to a societal problem.
“If the Government wants to make the culture shift from treatment to prevention, they can’t achieve that without the people around this table. Our public catering message needs to address that directly: we can help you to deliver your goals for health and well-being.”
But Anna Taylor said caterers faced a challenge in expressing their USP, which she felt wasn’t sufficiently evident. She added: “It’s being clear about what public sector catering offers in comparison to the private sector, and I don’t think that distinction is very clear to Government. What is the added value of the public sector? I would love to see that evidenced.”
Phil Shelley, senior operational and policy manager at NHS England, captured the point when he said: “We’ve got to move away from surviving to being visionary.”
Professor Morgan concluded: “If we simply focus on funding with cap in hand, we’ll be at the back of the queue. We need to recognise that funding is a result of successful campaigning, so I go back to Anna’s point about changing our narrative and having better stories to tell with good data. And we can do that by working in concert.”
APPG Group on public food
Listening to the sentiments expressed, Jayne Jones asked whether members felt this was a moment in time to push for an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on public food. “That would give us a platform to have these conversations with the right people,” she said.
Amanda Pettingill added: “We need to say to the Government, ‘what is important to you?’ and we need to play to those strengths and to change the narrative.”
Meanwhile, Nicky Joiner, chair of ASSIST FM, cited Scotland’s Good Food Nation Act, which she said was making caterers and local authorities work together, share best practice and achieve a rationalised approach. The bigger picture thinking is helping to focus Government on where the funding needs to be, to support local authorities in delivering what the Act demands of them.”
Jayne Jones agreed, saying the school food APPG had raised the profile of school catering.
“There’s a vacuum there for the broader public sector in the UK, where we don’t have an engagement opportunity beyond this group with the wider sector and our MPs. Isn’t public food of significant enough value that it should be discussed by MPs?”
Judith Gregory said the cross-party group on school food in Wales afforded the opportunity to make collective representations to Government, and caterers had successfully lobbied for higher funding.
Tom Bradshaw suggested that the success of an APPG often hangs on having a passionate sponsor in an MP who understands the issues and can motivate colleagues to participate.
Plant-based products
The discussion moved onto issues of sustainability and whether the appetite for plant-based products was waning. Cathy Amos, head of customer marketing for the public sector at Brakes, and non-executive director of Love British Food, talked about the need for a ‘greener plate’ and that positive messaging was central in selling that to customers.
She said when schools were approached with the idea of substituting some meat for pulses, the cost savings were a huge win for caterers.
“Nobody wants anything taken away, that’s such a negative connotation. But you can talk about adding more in, using better quality of what we have in this country, balanced with less of it to create a healthy, nutritious dish.”
Professor Morgan agreed, saying: “Less meat, better meat, more pulses for those triple benefits. That’s got to be the future for health, climate and social justice.”
Anna Taylor said beans and pulses were a focus for The Food Foundation, which was planning a campaign to encourage people to eat more pulses and for British farmers to grow more of these crops. She pointed to the positive lasting impact that its Veg Power campaign had made on children’s diets, saying they hoped to replicate it.
Tom Bradshaw said farmers could support this shift if it was underpinned by purchasing of higher quality British meat. But he feared that the poor funding of public sector catering would instead leave British farmers producing high-grade food but unable to compete on price, meaning a slip in food standards.
Cost-saving methods
A final discussion point examined whether there were more economical ways for caterers to deliver their service within the public perception of a freshly-prepared, healthy meal.
Charles Abraham said Sodexo’s research on the public understanding of ‘fresh’ included outlets using central production units and cooking or reheating on site. With a lack of qualified chefs available for recruitment, he felt central production kitchens or cook freeze options offered economical ways of providing a service.
Iain Robertson pointed out that many hospitals had already switched to these styles of service and that customers didn’t notice a difference in their meal. He said: “It plugs the skill shortage gap as you need less people to deliver that service. If it works in healthcare it will work for other sectors as well.”
However, Judith Gregory said the ‘whole school’ approach in education catering, where the kitchens built a relationship with the children to encourage uptake, meant they preferred to cook from scratch.
Conclusion
Jayne Jones summarised the debate with some key takeaways for the Alliance, with an ambition to use data more effectively and share knowledge more broadly, to build arguments that underpin their demands of Government.
She invited members to ‘begin to think like ministers and join up the narrative and reframe our discussions’, seeking to leverage the opportunity of new political leadership and younger MPs’ understanding of the world, whilst using the ‘regulatory and political levers’ across departments.
She suggested harnessing the opportunity of the forthcoming food strategy, as well as the devolved nations’ commitments to food systems change. She asked the room, “How do we link the work we are doing with the growth mission, and bring those disparate voices together, because food is a cross sectoral issue.”
Action points for 2025
The annual roundtable involving those named as Public Sector Catering’s ‘Most Influential’ provides the ideas and aims for the year ahead that will be pursued by the industry’s umbrella body the Public Sector Catering Alliance.
Under the leadership of Alliance chair Jayne Jones and vice chair Anita Brown, the group will be looking to adopt and develop the following key ideas:
- Re-apply to Defra for the Alliance to be given a place on the Food & Drink Sector Council
- The creation of an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Public Sector Food; using the contacts and influence of caterers and suppliers to identify MPs to support it
- Collecting and collating data that shows the value of public food as part of the Government’s ambitions for growth, health, education and sustainability
- Creating positive messaging around less and better meat and greater use of beans and pulses
- Sharing innovative solutions to food service that reduce the reliance on large numbers of people and streamline production for cost efficiency.