We talked about the research done by members of the group on food procurement in Sheffield and South Yorkshire, and how to get more commercial traders involved in the network. Some of our ideas for actions were:
- supporting Better Food Traders with their campaign to reduce business rates for good food businesses later this year
- promoting maps of local food suppliers so more people know about them
- exploring these whether Sheffield schools could procure more food locally when their catering contract comes up for renewal next year
- campaigning for automatic registration of children onto free school needs if parents are on benefits support
Summary of previous activities by the Working Group
- Local Food Action plan – has 18 priorities relating to procurement
- The working group previously did work as procurement by anchor institutions in Sheffield and produced Feeding the Future report with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and Institute for Sustainable Food
- This engaged with 6 anchor institutions (2 universities, Sheffield Colleges, Sheffield City Council, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, schools) and interviewed smaller suppliers of food.
- The report aimed to understand the baseline (e.g. what percentage of food at anchor institutions is currently coming from smaller suppliers?) and created a roadmap of actions for how this supply could become more local, more sustainable and healthier.
- The work then stalled because the Sheffield food partnership came under review
Looking forwards as a Working Group: barriers to action
- Funding and resource. Arbourthorne School as an example of a hub – this requires funding a dedicated person in role to lead on it.
- Anchor institutions are tied into contracts and will only deal with large companies
- Need to be commercially viable e.g. catering at Sheffield Colleges, students mostly eat cheesy chips, what would lead to healthier choices?
- Anchor institutions all have different processes for tendering that are difficult to navigate.
- Good Food Economy is wider than public sector procurement – but other elements less emphasised partly because commercial traders etc not engaging with ShefFood network
- The working group has struggled with a lack of clear objectives and inconsistent membership – so conversations haven’t felt joined up
Looking forwards as a Working Group: upcoming opportunities
- The schools catering contract with Taylor Shaw is up for renewal in 2027.
- The South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre produced a South Yorkshire Food Networks Feasibility Report. Regional focus could be an opportunity especially if Burnham is Prime Minister as he has been talking about further devolution and more localised procurement.
- DEFRA recently awarded 6 local food Partnerships with a Gold award £120k – we could try and learn from what those selected are doing. Bristol/Oxfordshire doing interesting things.
- Sean Benstead worked on the procurement report while at CLES, now at SYMCA – not working on food but could be a good connection.
- Aligning with other schemes around young people and food e.g. Eatsmart, Food for life, working with Learn Sheffield around children at risk of food poverty, campaign for automatic registration of children into free school meals if parents are on benefits support.
- Better Food Traders are developing a campaign to reduce business rates for food businesses that meet their criteria for local sustainable food supplies – coming later this year.
- Mapping/visualising of food systems – quite a few of these exist already but need more promotion/use. (e.g. GIS mapping of local food suppliers by University of Sheffield).
- Engage with / promote Menus of Change which gives a selection of actions organisations can take to move towards healthy/sustainable menus.
- Engage with TUCO to support procurement.
Next steps for this group
- Terms of reference / more clarity on purposes.
- Set some objectives for the next 6 months.
- Think about who else should be part of it and how to bring them in.