Conclusions and recommendations
1. Child obesity and the general health of
children is now a major public issue with heightened concern,
in particular, about the poor quality and nutrition of school
food. To improve school
food the Department for Education and Skills has committed a total
of £220 million of additional funding over three years from
September 2005, and a further, more targeted, £240 million
for the three years from 2008-09. A key test of its effectiveness
will be whether the new Nutritional Standards (mandatory from
September 2006) are being met, such as the number of times that
healthier food including fruit, fresh vegetables and oily fish
are available over a given period; and whether take-up and pupil
and parent satisfaction are rising.
2. The School Food Trust faces a considerable
challenge in influencing and changing the eating habits of the
7.6 million pupils in 21,000 schools across England.
The Department needs to agree with the Trust an inspection and
performance reporting regime to assess whether it is on track
to achieve its four published goals, including for all school
meals to meet the food and nutritional standards for school food
by September 2009. The Department and Trust will need to build
on the developing school meal inspection regime instituted in
2005 by Ofsted.
3. The School Food Trust also faces uncertainty
about the availability of additional funding from the Big Lottery
Fund over and above its £15 million core funding over three
years. Additional funding could have been
as much as £45 million as announced by the Department in
March 2005, but now will be £20 million or less, with the
actual amount to be confirmed by the summer of 2007. The Department
will need to support the Trust in coping with this funding uncertainty
particularly if, in addition, the Trust receives less than the
maximum £20 million that now remains available.
4. The average level of school meal take up
is 45%, and as low as 26% in some local authorities. To
meet its targets of increasing take-up by 4% by March 2008 and
10% by autumn 2009, the School Food Trust needs to help local
authorities and schools to develop strategies to tackle the barriers
to take-up, particularly in the worst performing areas. Good practice
at some schools already includes providing a healthy and appetising
range of dishes linked to education programmes, and more children-friendly
dining environments with reduced queues (for example, by staggering
lunch breaks over longer periods or introducing cafeteria-style
catering services).
5. For many children and adults, publicly
provided meals form a key element in their daily diet, but not
all public bodies make the most of the opportunity to promote
healthier eating. They and their contractors
should assess regularly the dietary requirements of all their
existing and potential customers, including the elderly and those
from ethnic and religious minority communities, canvassing customer
views as part of regular quality audits of catering services.
Frontline organisations should work with contract caterers to
introduce healthier food combined with educational events that
encourage healthy eating, and introduce 'traffic light' systems
to highlight the nutritional value of each menu option.
6. There are wide disparities in the prices
paid by public bodies for the same food items, ranging from between
32 pence and £1.10 for a standard 800g loaf of wholemeal
bread, and between 17 and 44 pence for a pint of milk.
Following the example of the Ministry of Defence, Departments
should conduct regular benchmarking surveys or draw upon publicly
available or commercially generated pricing information, and secure
explanations from frontline organisations where significant price
variations exist. They should also encourage greater use of e-procurement
methods to stimulate increased competition and greater transparency
of prices through, for example, e-auctions.
7. A lack of commercial skills and knowledge
about the specialist food and catering market undermines the ability
of frontline procurers to strike good deals with the major national
wholesale food or multi-national contract catering companies.
The three Departments[2]
and the Prison Service, working with the Office of Government
Commerce, should use their collective purchasing power to negotiate
with the major food and catering firms for a larger share of the
£95 million earned annually by contract catering firms from
their suppliers by way of volume discounts and rebates.
8. Just over half of public bodies do not
engage in any joint purchasing activity, particularly in the health
and schools sectors, despite the fact that 44% of those organisations
use at least two of the same food and catering suppliers.
The Department for Education and Skills and the NHS Purchasing
and Supply Agency should encourage more examples like the four
Essex primary schools which have achieved better deals, reduced
overheads and obtained higher quality food by standardising and
aggregating their food requirements. They should also promote
greater use of nationally negotiated framework contracts.
9. Frontline catering staff often lack the
skills to receive and store food efficiently, or prepare meals
that get the most from the ingredients, and a quarter of local
authorities do not have enough cooks with sufficient skills to
use fresh ingredients in preparing school meals.
A commercially experienced on-site chef or manager can realise
significant savings by, for example, instituting rigorous goods
receivable checks, and redesigning menus to increase nutritional
quality and balance more with less expensive dishes to minimise
the risk of loss and reduce waste.
10. A fifth of schools have kitchen facilities
that are more than 30 years old. The Department
for Education and Skills has made investment in new kitchen facilities
a priority within a wider £8 billion capital investment by
2010-11 to refurbish and reconstruct the school estate. It needs
to hold education authorities to account for meeting this priority,
and challenge any failure to bring about the planned modernisation
of facilities.
11. If the above recommendations are implemented
across the public sector as a whole there is scope, without affecting
quality, to realise £220 million annual efficiency savings
in food procurement by 2010-11, for re-investment in better facilities,
training and food. For the three Departments,
the Committee expects to see measurable progress within two years
(by 2008-09) towards:
- The annual savings target of
around £100 million estimated by the National Audit Office
to be achievable in the education and health sectors by 2010-11,
including a contribution from the wider £1 billion financial
benefits promised by the Department of Health's recent deal with
DHL; and
- savings of some £20 million promised by
the Ministry of Defence over the five year life of its new main
food contract.
12. The National Audit Office has demonstrated
that it is possible for public bodies to increase the proportion
of food purchased competitively from local or regional producers
while complying with EU requirements.
Following the lead of the Ministry of Defence in working with
the UK meat industry, the three departments together with the
Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, should explore
with UK food producers ways to increase the amount of UK produce
purchased by the public sector. Public bodies should also be able
to demonstrate that the animal welfare and food production practices
of their suppliers adhere to the standards under which UK producers
operate and satisfy themselves that enough independent spot checks
and inspections are taking place.
13. The Department of
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has produced overarching guidance
and toolkits on sustainable food procurement, but turning these
into practical and effective contracting arrangements at the local
level has proved less successful. The
Department, together with the Office of Government Commerce and
the three main food procuring departments, should work with the
major food and catering firms to develop and promote improved
contract management practices. These should, for example, encourage
smaller, locally based, producers by breaking contracts into smaller
lots, and focus on outcomes such as reducing waste or increasing
healthy eating.
14. Public sector procurers should seek to
increase the proportion of food purchased from 'Fair Trade' sources
that offer the same standard at a competitive price.
In some cases fair trade products will be more expensive but departments
should work with the supply chain to improve competitiveness while
still securing a fair price for producers.
2 DepartmentforEducationandSkills,theMinistryofDefenceandtheNHSPurchasingandSupplyAgency Back
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