How Plymouth feeds its school children to Gold Standard Catering Mark

Food Plymouth DEAL ConferenceBrad Pearce - Education Catering ManagerFriday 20 September 2013

Education Catering Service

Plymouth City Council “In-house” provider of school food Maintained schools and academies

Currently working with: 62 maintained primary schools 5 maintained special schools 1 maintained nursery school 2 primary academies 2 secondary academies

Education Catering Service

Statutory responsibility FSM Paid meal on request

Community focus 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

Sustainable procurement – Our objectives

Work began to re-tender our food contracts from 2009 onwards.

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.

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?