Robin Gourlay - LA catering in Scotland - 06/19/2007

William Rose: Now what we have is Robin Gourlay, who is the Head of Facilities at East Ayrshire. He's got a story to tell about the work that he's done to change the way that food is delivered in schools.

He strikes me as a very visionary person because several years ago when all around were getting rid of kitchens in schools and developing sensible new diets of fried Mars Bars and chips and pizzas and so on, he stuck with it and made sure that the kitchens remained and that the staff remained and that the ability to actually cook basic ingredients was there.

And so when the thoughts that he's about to tell us about came to the fore, he was well placed to actually do something about cooking local, organic food. So Robin, would you like to come and tell us all about that?

Robin Gourlay: Since August 2004, we've been working hard in East Ayrshire to develop a sustainable school meals service, and this has been a rewarding experience for everyone involved, for parents, teachers, pupils and local food producers.

East Ayrshire is a land-locked area. It's a mixture of urban and rural. In terms of indicators of multiple deprivation, it comes out about the sixth worst in Scotland, usually. So it's an area where good quality school meals are a genuine requirement and much needed.

It's an ambitious council who don't have a lot of resources in terms of a manufacturing base or even a huge agricultural base particularly, but it's trying to make a difference. And one of the ways it's trying to focus the difference is in terms of education and health.

The journey really began with us when Hungry for Success was introduced by the Scottish Executive and they committed £63.5 million over three years, and then extended it for a further three years. This was a tremendous opportunity to revisit the service and look to see what we were actually doing now.

One of the most significant things I guess was that they introduced national nutritional standards, but that wasn't the most significant for me. It was in the report that they said that rather than regarding school meals as a CCT, a commercial service, it was in fact a best value service, and that allowed us to look much more widely at what we were doing and how we could integrate better with education and health promoting agendas.

My career's been founded on the economic bottom line, but what this meant in terms of Hungry for Success and introducing best value concepts rather than strict commercial concepts was that we could look much more widely at the service and look at both the environmental impact of what we were doing and the social impact as well as the economic impact.

I have three overheads with far too much on them but I just want to throw the question to you in terms of developing a sustainable school meals service - are we in fact addressing the economic, environmental and social aspects of school meals?

So in the first year, really it was about laying the foundations of this service but we did do things like removing confectionery and fizzy drinks vending which cost about £70,000 to do that, but we firmly believed we couldn't operate to a dual standard, and that was an investment in the health of pupils within East Ayrshire.

Improvements to dining rooms, investing in the ambience of the service, establishing pretty radical menus… My story is that you could make the healthiest beef burger in the world and serve that through a school meals service, but then the same child goes and gets an unhealthy beef burger, or steak pie or whatever it is, and you've taught them absolutely nothing because they both look exactly the same.

So what we tried to introduce children to was a much wider range of food and by repetition make that normal and acceptable. And I can say that having worked in this for five years, that is indeed the case, children will readily accept mackerel, salmon, roasted vegetables, couscous, a whole range of things that they would just have turned their noses up at before. So fairly radical menus were introduced to achieve the nutritional standards.

The second year was really about communication – a lot of speaking to teachers, parents, conferences and so on and so forth. Healthy cooking tips and demonstrations, which I actually thought would be seen as patronising. We ran them for parents usually about 3 o'clock when they were coming to pick up their children, but the demand was huge! We can't meet that demand – I simply don't have enough resources to do that. But that was surprising and encouraging.

Foodlab presentations – I commissioned a company who gave presentations on diet and food to every class in every primary school in East Ayrshire to raise the project and we created an organic and local food pilot at one school initially in that year.

And the third year really has been about establishing that local and organic project and taking it through the EU procurement legislation which I'll talk more about later. It's about producing an ethical marketing plan, a marketing plan that focuses on ethical foods.

We introduced a family service in some schools which has completely changed the dynamic in the dining room where the children sit, I was going to say in social groups, but really anywhere they want. And there is salad, vegetables, potatoes, bread, beakers of water or fruit juice on the table and the children are served at the table by a primary 6 or primary 7 child.

It completely changes the dynamic within the dining room. It makes a much more social event and children are actually quite happy to sit there longer. Some are desperate to get out and play football, but others are happy to sit there and chat to their pal and pick at a wee bit of salad and so on and it's great to see.

We got rid of all the meal trays – the plastic trays – and introduced crockery and metal cutlery everywhere. I noticed Roberta was saying in Rome they've got biodegradable paper, but maybe crockery's better because it adds a social dimension to it and you can use it as many times as you want.

We introduced tasting stations – we have that at the entrance to the dining room, and if our menus are fairly challenging the child can get a wee taste of what's on offer, and then it's not strange when they get to the counter.

And I'll not dwell on it, but I'll just mention it because I'm very proud of it. In special schools we've got great menus and branding and so on, but I said to one of the heads in a special school, 'Does that work for your children?'. And he said, 'Well, no not really'. I said, 'Well, what do you need?'. He said, 'Well, we need something that's audible, possibly something that's in Braille. Some children recognise cartoon representations of food, others need photographs of food.' I said, 'Well, can we work on that?'. So we devised this menu board and the cook there will record in the morning what's available on the menu and then the kids can come up and they can press the button and hear what's on and then there's the other aspects I told you about.

However, moving swiftly on. We introduced organic and local produce, and then subsequently adopted Food for Life because it provided an excellent framework for what we're trying to do. It looked not only at the provision of good quality food, but it also looked at the educational aspects of delivering a school meals service.

If I could draw your attention to the last three bullet points – we've extended the pilot from 12 to 25 schools because it was so successful. We've had an increase of uptake – I checked the figures yesterday – the best increase in uptake actually we've had is 30% in one school. That's not to say it happens in every school, because it doesn't. But equally we've had a –2%, but I think that figure of 24 or 30% does show the potential at least in what we're doing.

And all this is provided for, I say there are additional costs of 13 pence. So if half the schools are buying off national contracts and half buying off local and organic contracts, I'm saying the difference is 13 pence. Actually, for 06/07 we are actually showing a cost of 9 pence over the schools that are not on national contracts. Now considering the benefits of investing in the community, investing in better quality food and the educational aspects, then I think that 9 pence pales into insignificance.

So what does it mean in practice? Well we buy everything within a 40 mile radius of Kilmarnock which is the centre of my universe. That reduced the food miles from about 350 down to 99. Afton Glen Farm provides all our fresh and cooked meat. Brownings happen to be the British Baker of the Year, so that's good that we can use them.

It's all fresh fish we use – we don't buy any of that crumb stuff that you see in many schools or indeed if you go to British Home Stores or somewhere - that's probably about 60% crumb and about 40% fish. What we buy in is fresh fish and we dress it ourselves.

Clyde Organics in Lanark we buy our school milk from, organic school milk. Corrie Mains Farm is eggs – they're not organic but they're free range. Dunlop Dairy is an artisan cheese maker – she has her own dairy herd and her own goats. She makes her own cheese, on the farm, and she actually devised a cheese for us that is slightly less strong in taste but keeps better for schools. And Stair Organics – an excellent fruit and vegetable grower in the southern part of East Ayrshire.

The Scottish Executive commissioned research to evaluate what we are doing and you'll see some very high figures there. 95% of parents support it because it keeps money in the community, it's better for the environment, and in terms of political support, the 77% who thinks it's a good use of council money in fact gives us quite a strong mandate for what we're doing.

Pupils love the fresher food, know it's better for the environment, and very encouragingly, nearly 70% say that the meals taste better and I would concur with that. Catering staff love working with better quality produce – the produce is hugely better than what we're buying off national contracts.

Teachers are very positive on the educational benefits and will spend a lot of time and effort trying to integrate what we're doing into the curriculum. And producers, more than just the business opportunity which obviously they value, I would think all our producers are in it because they farm and they produce in the community, and what is more central to the community than the school. And quite rightly they're proud to be able to supply that demand from the schools in their community.

Roberta kind of touched on this. I think in terms of – I'm coming on to talk about contracts and the framework and so on – that food is a special case and I don't think we can look at it and evaluate how we procure food in the same way as cosmetics or clothes or compost bins.

It is a social and cultural matter. It is about the preservation of human health. It is about the preservation of the environment. And within it there certainly is a multiple dividend between health, education, rural economy or the economy generally, and food security.

And Professor Kevin Morgan from Cardiff University, who's become a guru to me, sums it up very well and says in fact that if it's all about children and the service we're providing to them, then school meals has become a litmus test of the public sector's commitment to sustainable development. In fact in some ways in terms of the health improvement agenda and the sustainable development agenda, school meals, because it has a multiple dividend, has been propelled to the front of these agendas.

So is public sector food procurement an issue? Well absolutely it is. 31% of greenhouse gases are attributable to food production, storage, transportation, consumption and waste. £85 million is spent in Scotland by the public sector, so in terms of the health dividend where £4 billion is the cost of obesity to the NHS. In terms of economic regeneration and all the other aspects that I said in multiple dividend, just think what difference that could make to Scotland.

A lot of people say to me, 'But this can't really be done'. But in fact the policy framework is there, provided by the Executive, Europe and national Government. Choosing our Future, Scotland's Sustainable Development Strategy specifically targets food as a key area of sustainable development in relation to the environment.

The Power of Well Being – it doesn't quite give a blank cheque to local government, but it does say that you can do anything as long as you can justify it, which will benefit the community, so we have that.

The Schools (Nutrition and Health) Bill is enormously helpful in this regard as well, and of course each council has to have their own community planning agenda. The genesis of what we're doing was Hungry for Success, but it was also this bit of advice which is published by the Scottish Executive, that local authorities in procuring catering and food should look at sustainability aspects, and listed there without going through them are specifically what they say in using local and organic and fair trade as an example. So again, that was another mandate.

Now this isn't a cosy arrangement we have with our local suppliers, with its nice fuzzy focus on the community. We took this through the full rigour of EU procurement legislation and we awarded the contracts on 50% quality and 50% price.

And listed are some of the criteria we used that mirror a lot of what Roberta was saying. We're interested in timescales from harvest to delivery. Roberta's right to say that you can't write within the contract, 'We want to source everything within ten kilometres', but you can refer to timescales between harvest and delivery and if that's what you want to achieve, that gives you the facility to do that.

Reduction of pesticides, quality systems, reduction in environmental impacts, biodiversity, animal welfare, recycling - these are all things in that holistic approach to awarding contracts and delivering a sustainable school meals service that we considered was important.

Just as an aside, yes, we're interested in sustainable development and we're interested in delivering a good quality school meals service, but when people say to me, 'What is the mandate for this?'. Well, this is another way of looking at it – the growth of ethical food has been 62% in the last four years, and I think this year, it's forecast to grow by about 30% alone.

Almost 70% of people buy some organic food, even in the most disadvantaged social groups, 50% buy some organic food. So my answer to it is if we apply all the sustainable development aspects to this to what we're doing in East Ayrshire, as a commercial service, we're simply responding to a customer demand that's out there in any case and it's right that we should be aware of how customer demand is changing.

You only need to go into the supermarket to see what I'm saying there is absolutely correct. Every time you go back to the supermarket, there is more and more ethical and organic food available.

Just an overhead to say there are high expectations, the Scottish Executive having invested £137 million over six years, that we should be providing an excellent school meals service. And there are very high expectations, and it's quite right that there should be.

So where do we go from here? I think the link between health, education, economic regeneration and economic development, that has to come to the fore. Indeed, Tim Lang in his Review of the Scottish Diet Action Plan gives us a really good steer on where we should be taking that.

Following on from Dr Gruer's talk this morning, the link between public health and sustainable development objectives, I think is going to become critical. Funding the transition from a commercial service, which school meals was regarded as previously to a health and well being service requires funding.

Perhaps we're further down the road than most – many colleagues still need that support. Indeed I still need that support so you need to fund the transition from a commercial to a health and well being service.

We need to work more in communities and promote cultural and cognitive change – that's another steal from Professor Lang's Review of the Diet Action Plan. We need to make sure that parents, teachers and pupils are all actively engaged and knowledgeable about this and link it into the curriculum with the aim of producing educated consumers of tomorrow.

We need to develop skills, not only of our catering managers, but of the people in charge of procurement within the local authority, and train them about more enlightened public sector procurement policies. And indeed engage with media and politically in order to develop this agenda further.

So in conclusion, if the biggest challenge facing us all is sustainable development, then school meals, I believe, is uniquely placed to deliver that agenda. And Professor Morgan is correct. It has in fact become a 'litmus test of the public sector's commitment to sustainable development'.

Thank you for listening.

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