Unlocking opportunities: lifting the lid on public sector food procurement
Read this leaflet for a quick introduction to the Public Sector Food Procurement Initiative (PSFPI)
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Having your cake and eating it: the benefits of sustainable food procurement
If we are what we eat, then public sector food purchasers help shape the lives of millions of people. In hospitals, schools, prisons, and canteens around the country, good food helps maintain good health, promote healing rates and improve concentration and behaviour.
But sustainable food procurement isn’t just about better nutrition. It’s about where the food comes from, how it’s produced and transported, and where it ends up. It’s about food quality, safety and choice.
Most of all, it’s about defining best value in its broadest sense. Money well spent on food budgets now will make longer term savings in other budgets. It creates a better environment, and promotes healthier and more prosperous communities.
Serving nutritious food aids patient recovery and makes hospital beds available quicker
Increasing opportunities for local producers helps maintain employment and foster thriving communities
Specifying organic food and other methods of production that protect the environment and safeguard animal welfare helps ensure a flourishing countryside.
The Public Sector Food Procurement Initiative: theory into practice
This all sounds great in theory, but is it possible in practice?
Since its launch in 2003, the Public Sector Food Procurement Initiative (PSFPI) has highlighted practical ways in which the public sector’s £1.8 billion annual food budget can help deliver “a world-class sustainable farming and food sector that contributes to a better environment and healthier and prosperous communities”.
The PSFPI is also helping to implement other Government efforts to improve food in schools and hospitals. These include the ‘Choosing better health – a food and health action plan’ and programmes to improve school food, available at www.defra.gov.uk/farm/policy/sustain/procurement/health.htm
The PSFPI’s objectives
The aim of the Initiative is to encourage public sector buyers to work with farmers, growers and suppliers to ensure more sustainable food is consumed in hospitals, schools, prisons and canteens.
It has the following five priority objectives:
- Raise production and process standards
- Increase tenders from small and local producers
- Increase consumption of healthy and nutritious food
- Reduce adverse environmental impacts of production and supply
- Increase capacity of small and local suppliers to meet demand.
It is overseen by the Food Procurement Implementation Group, which comprises key central and local government procurement and policy officers.
Within its five priorities, there are specific aims relating to quality, choice, waste, employment in the industry, and best practice management, for example:
- Increased demand for organic food
- Improved choice for minority ethnic communities
- Reduced waste
- Better conditions for catering staff
- Improved data collection and monitoring.
Overcoming the challenges to implementation
The PSFPI web site offers purchasers and suppliers a one-stop shop of guidance, advice and inspiration, including:
- practical projects
- model specifications and related tools
- training
- case studies
- contacts.
Find it all at www.defra.gov.uk/farm/policy/sustain/procurement/index.htm
Challenge 1: Procurement policy and regulation
The Government’s procurement policy to achieve value for money and the EC Treaty, EC procurement directives and related UK Regulations ensure that public procurement is fair and transparent, with no discriminatory barriers to free trade.
So public sector buyers cannot restrict their purchases to specific locations or suppliers. But the framework still offers plenty of scope to pursue sustainable development when procuring food and catering services.
Find out more about incorporating environmental
issues within UK and EC procurement frameworks on the OGC website
Additional PSFPI-related procurement guidance is available on the PSFPI
website
Challenge 2: Working with small and local suppliers
Many small and local companies feel daunted by public sector procurement. Purchasers can encourage their involvement, from briefing them on how the process works, to specifying more seasonal vegetables. And suppliers can also raise their game on due diligence, legal compliance and contract management.
Following successful pilot studies in 2004-5, the PSFPI has run a series of regional projects to develop the supply side.
Direct suppliers to advice on
selling to the public sector, either directly or via
primary suppliers on the PSFPI website
Find out more about the issues from the March
2005 National Food Suppliers Conference on the PSFPI website
Challenge 3: Sharing guidance and best practice for purchasers
Public sector procurement can be complex enough, even before you tangle with social and environmental considerations and developing potential suppliers. So the PSFPI offers busy purchasing managers advice to make their food procurement more sustainable.
Find the answers to frequently asked questions
about local sourcing, organic and fair trade certification, or procurement
rules on the PSFPI
website (PDF) (170
KB)
Read over 60 case studies of how
other people have done it.
Discover what government departments are doing.
Search Sustainable
Development in Government annual reports for detailed progress
on Whitehall departments’ sustainable procurement
Get started on incorporating
the PSFPI into your catering and food supply contracts. PSFPI Toolkit and
model specification clauses
Sustainable food procurement in action
Small suppliers make good
An East Yorkshire farmer is proof that a small business can win
a major government contract. With just 25 staff, he now supplies assured
standard
eggs to all five Prison Service distribution centres, recycling the hens’ waste
as fertiliser for growing future hen feed. His tender was unsuccessful
in 2001, but Prison Service buyers encouraged the business to make improvements.
They debriefed the company on the weaker areas of its bid, and toured
the site to check progress a year later. The case study gives contact
details. We will update this if the details change.
Read the case study in full...
Improving nutrition improves the bottom line
Keeping catering in-house
has brought added benefits to Birmingham Heartlands and Solihull NHS
Trust. Investing in an in-house cook-chill unit means
that meals are more appetizing and nourishing, and over-cooked vegetables
are a thing of the past. A halal chef ensures that every patient’s
needs are catered for. Catering staff are proud of their key role in
health promotion initiatives such as ‘Fight back with food’.
Success breeds success, and Solihull Hospital now provides catering
services to City and Good Hope Hospitals, serving 8,000 patient meals
a day, and operating two thriving staff and visitor restaurants.
Read the case study in full...
New tender approach yields new suppliers
With a food budget of £3
million every year, Northumberland County Council wanted to encourage
more local suppliers to get a slice of the
pie. Purchasing managers organised a seminar explaining the tender process
to existing and potential suppliers, and Business Link and Northumbria
Larder followed up with application advice. The tender was also split
into lots by food category and county area to encourage participation.
These new approaches prompted a five-fold increase in interest from local
suppliers, who were awarded contracts for four of the seven food categories.
The county council faces more work in managing the increased number of
contracts, but it believes that the quantity and quality of the tenders
make it worthwhile.
Read the case study in full...
Going local at the local
Opting out of the LEA lunches contract, Gloucestershire’s North
Cerney Primary School bought in a different kind of local: the local
inn. The award-winning Bathurst Arms bar and restaurant now supplies
nutritionally balanced school meals –
at no extra cost. Local, seasonal produce is used wherever possible.
Food preparation and nutrition are now integrated into the curriculum,
too, and every child prepares their own lunch in a professional kitchen
at least once a term.
Read the case study in full...
Page last modified:
18 May 2007
Page published: 25 August 2006