2009: Looking to the Future

31st December 2009, 4:34pm

If dealing with spending cuts, encouraging healthier eating and reducing our carbon footprint are the biggest challenges facing public sector catering, what's the answer? According to industry's leaders and opinion-formers it's education, not diktat, that's needed and it has to start with the children.

In last month's issue of Cost Sector Catering we revealed the names of the inaugural Public Sector Catering Top 20 'most influential' list.

Just before Christmas we gathered them together at the House Of Commons to celebrate this recognition of them as the movers and shakers within the industry and took advantage of the opportunity to set up an informal debate about the biggest challenges facing catering today.

Coming from different sections of the public sector market you can be sure there was a variety of viewpoint, and yet everyone was unified in their determination to serve the best quality food they can and in their belief that what's needed is a strengthened industry going forward. Here's what they said.

Collaboration
Responding to editor David Foad's initial question about the challenges the industry is currently facing, Mike Duckett kicked off the debate listing the three issues he felt were the most pressing. "Sustainability, wastage and collaboration," he suggested were the key factors we should be focussing on.

"As public sector people we ought to be getting together more and sharing our different activities. We've all got strengths and weaknesses. We all have contracts – whether it's in prisons or hospitals – we all need to get together. I'm trying to do that in London with Sustain.

"I think that's the future and we could save a bit of money," he suggested, adding: "We're spending £500m or £600m on NHS catering and I think by working together we could save 15% of that."

Taking up the issue, Garry Hawkes said that there ought not to be the perceived division between public sector catering and cost sector catering.
"We talk about public sector catering as if it is ring fenced and different, but in my view it's integrated to the whole of catering and hotel keeping," he said.

"I don't see this division between one part of hospitality and the next, and I think if you look at people's career development and training it takes a whole sector view."

Agreeing, Prue Leith said: "I think that what we call cost sector catering has suffered appallingly from a feeling that it isn't quite as good or important as restaurant or hotel catering."

Citing her work with the School Food Trust and the training of school cooks she felt there was a missed opportunity with 60,000 staff working in schools who could easily switch within the industry to other areas of hospitality if they were properly qualified.

Concluding she insisted, "I think we really need that link because otherwise, if you cook in a prison are you thought of as a chef?"

Alan Dewberry also thought greater collaboration within the industry was crucial if good progress were to be made.

"Collaboration is something you've all got to do if you believe that good food for patients will help with their recovery, that pupils learn better when they're fed properly and that prisoners behave better," he said.

"The problem we have is that where Alan Tuckwood of the prison service does have all the say about all the prisons, people here from hospitals and schools realise they've only got a say in one council. How you get the whole of education and the whole of the health department to work with the prison service is difficult. I don't know who heads that up," he said.

Tying the two themes together Hawkes said: "I think you've got to engage with institutions that have a wider influence than just public sector catering. The changes that we need are not going to be driven by a narrow sector of our industry, but by all of you, and by engaging in the totality of it and all the associations that exist, and by properly using public relations and debates to move the situation forward."

But he acknowledged: "That's very difficult because the reality is that the establishment in this country looks down on the whole of hospitality, never mind the public sector. And that is a critical issue.

"It's a major problem. There is enormous ignorance about what we do and I think strengthening the associations, the trade associations, the professional associations is critically important."

There were murmurs of agreement among many fellow members of the Top 20 around the table that this was indeed the case.

Taking up the issue, Philippe Rossiter said: "The industry, whether it's contract catering or public sector, that side of the industry is largely unrecognised and unsupported.

"None of the recipients of our services would see themselves in the tourism business nor would the people working for us, yet policy relating to the hospitality industry is often coming from the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media & Sport), so there's no political focus for our aspect of the industry."

Continuing, he added: "When you consider the overwhelming numbers of people employed in the sector, they are totally invisible because they are subsumed into the NHS, the education budget, and they are service providers within.

"We have a trade association – the BHA – that looks after the private sector and contract catering, but the public sector caterers have no voice on a national basis."

Looking to the future he went on: "I think there's a real opportunity to collaborate and the institute could provide that focus to enable you to do that, because there is a requirement to face all the challenges, whether it's financial, or sustainability.

"I think there are going to be real challenges on the public sector over the next decade, and what often gets cut - from my experiences in the army - is the catering side because it's unseen, it's not a front line service.

"I think there is a real opportunity - perhaps today is a catalyst for that - for some collaboration because we could speak with a much stronger voice particularly for the public sector, with the private sector supporting it."

Alan Tuckwood agreed but added: "While the public sector is splintered there can be no collaboration. And while there are different agendas there can be no collaboration. Procurement has an immense amount of influence led by the Treasury and the pressure that brings to bear on the way public money is spent.

"While you have LEAs (local education authorities) doing what they want in isolation with their procurement arrangements locally, competing with national procurement arrangements, you have to wonder where that collaboration mark is in achieving sustainability."

Hawkes suggested: "We've got to be clear about what we want and then find institutions that will vocalise that opinion, not fragment ourselves by me in my small corner and you in yours.

"There's a lot more strength in embracing the whole of hospitality for all its faults, than trying to reinvent something from scratch."

Sounding a positive note Richard McGloin said: "Surely food and catering is more on the public agenda than ever before, so there is an opportunity there. We're looking at the health agenda, corporate social responsibility, Fair Trade.

"All those things are demanded from us by our customers. We talk about budgets and cutbacks but food is on the agenda now and we've got to use that to our advantage.

"I don't think we are going to be the first thing to get cut this time round because people want choice and are more knowledgeable about food than ever before. It puts us in a position of advantage."

Agreeing Geoff Booth said: "With the funding being what it is in education right now there's never been a better time to collaborate; it's the only way we're going to survive. And we've got to get smarter.

"In education we've formed PACE (the Professional Association for Catering Education) which links all the colleges offering catering education together to help bring the standard up collectively, and we can only do that by linking with industry."

He was concerned however that budget cuts to some of those colleges was undermining some of the schemes and initiatives they'd put in place.

Finance and Education
Moving the conversation on, Fergus Chambers suggested that the biggest challenge for the industry was undoubtedly the tightening purse strings they would all be experiencing over coming years.

"Over the next four or five years it's going to be the public sector finances and funding available to us, and we are all going to have to cope with a lot less, and cooking for a lot more," he said.

"We've already suffered it and we will suffer more in years to come," he thought.

Helen Crawley is a reader in nutrition at the centre for food policy at City University London, who attended the event in the place of Tim Lang, head of food policy at the university and named in the Top 20.

She added that the issue was complicated by people's view of food.

"One thing that worries me is this idea that there is lots of food available very cheaply and it's all equal. But this idea that nutritional standards aren't important is going to come into play because cheaper food won't be of such a good standard."

She felt that vulnerable groups who were most in need of good quality food were also the most at risk of losing it as councils tried to apply budget cuts.

David Foskett wanted people – starting with children – to be better educated about the links between food, diet, nutrition and health as this was the best way to address multiple health issues which were looming with the potential to become serious drains on the economy and health service.

"There are so many of these diet issues which we face," he said, "And if we don't it's going to become an increasing problem," he felt. He said education was the key but he was worried he wasn't winning the battle in getting the message across.

Leith said she felt the message was slowly getting across and that at least more children were now eating food of a higher nutritional value.

However, she agreed that head teachers needed to be targeted to persuade more of them on board to push through the changes in school nutrition.

"Food needs to be in education," she said. "If we don't put it in the education in schools, the head teachers won't take any notice. It's not good enough to say it's voluntary."

Booth suggested that it was down to monitoring. "Ofsted is looking at the wellbeing of young people and that should include their food, nutrition and performance.

If Ofsted were to inspect schools on those issues and grade them on it then we have a mechanism to say, 'are you reaching the standard?'," he said.

Looking ahead
Wrapping up the conversation, and looking ahead for what improvements they were hoping for, Hawkes suggested that there needed to be recognised standards in training to provide what he called "a licence to practice."

He was looking for something that would prove a level of training and capability to run a catering establishment. "Then I think we might get some respect," he said. "We should have more effective training," he thought.

"Years ago there were more people leaving school who wanted to be a manager in this industry and who were motivated by it, and were not afraid to learn to cook and to wait and give positive service. Those things have been devalued, it's a great shame," he said.

Val Carter said she wanted to make the debate about food simpler. There was so much effort going into defining what made food seasonal or local that often those issues became the focus instead of what was actually important about good food.

Booth concluded that common sense was a key factor. "If you do things that are broadly correct and honest and honourable people appreciate that and they recognise that it is something worth doing."

The table agreed and that with this there were indeed grounds for optimism in the industry going forward.

Related Articles:

• 25 Jun 2010 - Ofsted says schools making progress on healthy eating
• 29 Mar 2010 - UFI IBRAHIM TO SUCCEED BOB COTTON AT BHA