Transcript How Plymouth feeds its school children to Gold Standard Catering Mark Food Plymouth DEAL Conference Brad Pearce - Education Catering Manager Friday 20 September.

How Plymouth feeds its school children
to Gold Standard Catering Mark
Food Plymouth DEAL Conference
Brad Pearce - Education Catering Manager
Friday 20 September 2013
Education Catering Service
 Plymouth City Council
 “In-house” provider of school food
 Maintained schools and academies
 Currently working with:
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62 maintained primary schools
5 maintained special schools
1 maintained nursery school
2 primary academies
2 secondary academies
Education Catering Service
 Statutory responsibility
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FSM
Paid meal on request
 Community focus
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Areas of deprivation
Social inclusion
Tackling health inequalities
Support families with cooking
skills and food budgeting
Education Catering Service
 Plymouth has a pupil population of 37,396
 In the schools where we provide services the
number of pupils is 20,774
 We currently employ 250 people
 We buy £1.2m of food per annum
 We serve circa 8,000 meals per day
Education Catering Service
Since the introduction of mandatory food and
nutritional standards we have been proactively
working to ensure that all pupils have access to
freshly prepared, good quality food.
We have: Built 20 new production kitchens
 Refurbished a further 45 school kitchens
 Removed deep fat fryers
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Sustainable procurement –
Our objectives
Work began to re-tender our food contracts from
2009 onwards.
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Good quality produce
Affordability
Fresh
Seasonal, and;
Local
Sustainable procurement –
Our challenges
 Value of the business and EU law
 Number and size of contracts
 Food and fuel cost increases
Sustainable procurement –
Our outcomes
In order to explain to potential contractors and
suppliers what our preferred aims were we adopted the
principles of Food for Life.
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Three local suppliers covering all requirements
All have a presence in Devon and Cornwall
High quality local produce
Shared deliveries
Road miles and carbon footprint significantly reduced
Sustainable procurement –
Our outcomes
 Food costs per meal
 New Economics Foundation reported that our
procurement generates a SROI of £3.04 for every
£1.00 spent
 Increased our take-up of meals by 30% over the last 5
years
Catering Mark & Food Plymouth
School Funding Reform
 In 2012 the government announced that budgets must be
delegated to schools.
 The budgets for the provision of school meals must be
delegated with effect from 01 April 2013.
Funds available for delegation
 Free school meals
 Kitchen repair and maintenance
 School lunch grant
For Plymouth this equates to around £1.8m
 Additionally, the Council is providing the additional
transitional amount of £600k - reducing over 4-years
which will support schools in the transfer of
responsibilities
Consultation
We held consultation events with schools who indicated
in a significant majority to either:  Pool budgets, or;
 Trade with the LA and the Education Catering Service
Pool = work together for the greater good and share
budgets and continue to cross subsidise. Any losses
carried forward to next years’ pooled budget.
Trade = individual SLA between the school and the
service. Any losses borne by the individual school in year.
School preferences
All schools decided that initially for the year 2013/14 they
would enter into the “pooled” arrangement.
This is:
 a significant recognition of the work of the service
 a recognition of the benefits of sustainable
procurement and economies of scale
 a recognition and support for smaller schools
School Food Steering Group
With all maintained primary and special schools having
agreed to pool catering budgets for 2013/14 we
established a School Food Steering Group to:  Manage the changes to school food delivery
following the national school funding reform, and;
 Explore potential alternative delivery models to
move to a viable and sustainable service
Scope of the Steering Group
 Consideration of the future delivery models for
school meals
 Finance arrangements for the catering pool from
April 2013 to March 2014
 Profitability of individual school kitchens
 Menu development in line with nutritional
standards
Scope of the Steering Group
 Wider issues such as childhood obesity and whole
school food policies
 Impact of welfare reform – eligibility criteria and
ability of parents to pay
 Setting the meal price
 Food contracts procurement
 Staffing issues
Agreed principles
 Children need to be involved in shaping the offer
 Building on strengths and what schools have said
via their decision to pool
 That all children should have access to freshly
cooked, healthy and affordable hot school food
 Collaboration and cooperative model values
 Vision for a longer term sustainable City wide
offer
School Food Plan
www.schoolfoodplan.com/
This plan is about good food and happiness. It is
about the pleasures of growing, cooking and
eating proper food. It is also about improving
the academic performance of our children and
the health of our nation.
Implications and local context
Young Plymouth – Tackle child poverty, the best start in
life, health inequalities, a good primary education.
Evidence demonstrates that the quality of food and menus
offered increases the concentration level of children and
has a positive effect on the standards of educational
attainment, behaviour and school attendance levels.
This is not just a service for those eligible for free school
meals.
Implications and local context
Those families which fall outside of entitlement need also
to be able to access good quality, fresh, local healthy hot
food on a daily basis to support good life choices for their
children with the available household disposable income
rather than a poorly produced home-packed lunch.
Use of the food bank in Plymouth has recently increased
by 40% up to 4,300 people; the proportion of whom have
children has also increased (May 2011 – April 2012).
Next steps for development
There is so much more work to do:
 Community Meals – improve and expand the service
to existing clients plus new traded customers
 Start to implement the School Food Plan
 Explore ways to support schools to implement The
Plan and create links with Health and Food for Life
Catering Mark
 Create and develop the JVC with schools
 Continue work with the Plymouth Food Charter
 Continue work to support the Sustainable Food City
Plymouth Action Plan
Questions?