Foundational Economy in Action: Excellence in Public Sector Food 

The Foundational Economy is the backbone of everyday life in Wales, providing essential goods and services to everyone. These include health and social care, food, housing, energy and utilities, construction, retailers on the high street, and tourism. The Foundational Economy is supported by a range of businesses, from small and medium-sized enterprises to large companies such as privatised utilities, mobile companies, and major supermarkets. It is estimated that the Foundational Economy provides employment for four out of every ten people in Wales and contributes to £1 out of every £3 spent in the country. 

A strong foundational economy ensures that essential human needs are available to everyone, regardless of their location, income or status. Supporting the foundational economy is a top priority in the Welsh government’s mission of economic resilience and reconstruction, which aims to create thriving communities and businesses throughout Wales. The Welsh Government’s Economic Action Plan encourages collaboration to address inequalities, promote inclusivity, and drive economic development, supporting business decisions. Building on the success of the 2021 Welsh Government’s Foundation Economy Challenge Fund, the Backing Local Firms Fund aims to support local businesses in delivering the products and services required by the public sector, creating better job opportunities closer to home. 

The Welsh Government’s “Backing Local Firms Fund” has financed various projects in the food sector to increase the amount of Welsh food served on public plates. The grant aims to support local food producers and suppliers in providing local, sustainable, and healthy food to schools, hospitals, and other public sector institutions. By promoting the production and consumption of local food, we can reduce our environmental impact and encourage sustainable practices in Wales. 

Cynnal Cymru is showcasing three of the public sector food-focused projects, all aiming to strengthen Wales’s Foundational Economy. To learn more, please see the case studies below:

Castell Howell Foods

Velindre University NHS Trust

Can Cook

Velindre University NHS Trust 

Enabling a FutureGen-ready food system  

The link between healthy food and patient recovery may seem an obvious one, but in 2023 staff at Velindre University NHS Trust (Velindre) set out to explore this relationship in more detail – and to find ways to maximise the benefits that a healthy food system can bring to patients, hospital staff and beyond. Chris Moreton, Deputy Director for Finance at Velindre, explains more. 

The Challenge:  

The current food system in Wales is facing multiple challenges that affect everyone. These include climate change, nature loss, a declining rural economy and food security. 

Agriculture in Wales is currently responsible for about 14% of Wales’s greenhouse gas emissions, whilst the move towards more intensive farming processes, to accommodate changing diets and consumer demand, reduces land fertility, contributes to negative impacts on surrounding air and waterways and is a key driver of biodiversity loss.  

Years of intensification in agriculture have left rural communities poorer and less stable, negatively impacting the well-being of farming communities. In addition, an over-reliance on an increasingly fragile global food system has contributed to rising food prices, food poverty and inequality.  

This in itself has knock-on effects for the NHS, but Wales is also seeing an increase in diet-related disease, exacerbated by a lack of affordable, accessible, fresh produce being eaten in the home and workplace. These diseases include Type II diabetes, cancers, cardiac and vascular diseases, strokes, and joint problems. 

The Opportunity:  

The Welsh public sector spends £97m on food for schools, hospitals, and social care, with Velindre’s annual food budget alone standing at c.£22 million. 

Chris believes that the NHS in Wales has the opportunity to lead the promotion of environmentally and socially responsible public sector food sourcing. By supplying local, good quality and sustainably-produced food, it can improve the health and well-being of patients, staff, and their families, as well as reducing ecological harm and supporting a fairer and more resilient Welsh food sector.  

This mission aligns with the goals of the Well-being of Future Generations Act, the Welsh Government’s ‘Buying Food Fit for the Future’ initiative, Velindre’s duty of actioning Socially Responsible Public Procurement, and contributes towards the ambition of reaching Net Zero by 2030.  

These mutually-reinforcing ambitions are contained in the project’s objectives: 

1. Increased access to healthy and affordable food will lead to better health outcomes. 

2. The food supply chain will be shorter, more resilient, and will have minimal environmental impact while providing value for money. 

3. The Trust will have more spaces where people can learn about and enjoy food. 

4. There will be a reduction in food waste and the ecological footprint. 

5. Partnerships will lead to the development of vibrant local food economies and communities. 

Velindre aims to make food a well-being priority for its patients and staff through increasing access to healthy food options at a reasonable price both inside and outside of work. This includes the introduction of “Well-being Wednesdays” and a veg box scheme – which proved successful during the pandemic – to promote healthy eating habits.  

Menu redesign will be evaluated, starting with the restaurant at Velindre Cancer Centre, to explore opportunities to integrate seasonal and organic ingredients, using tools such as meat reduction and use of non-branded projects to help maximise budgets.  

By working directly with suppliers, the project aims to ensure that ethical sourcing and fair-trade options will also be explored where Welsh produce is not available. Skills, training and education will be a key pillar in the project both in terms of roles linked to food – from cooks to procurement – to broader staff engagement to help staff make informed decisions about food in work and wider life. 

Beyond that, by providing visible leadership through its food mission, Chris hopes that Velindre can lead by example across the public sector in Wales to help drive regional collaboration and alignment around food sourcing, promoting agroecological food production and unlocking opportunities for innovation. 

Next steps:  

The project has been developed with the support of Welsh Government’s Backing Local Firms Fund that supports the development of key foundational sectors such as food.  

Staff buy-in for this project is already high, with staff workshops indicating near-unanimous support for the food mission. This provides a key resource for consistent messaging around the benefits of the proposed changes.  

Chris explains that “Clear, consistent messaging and collaboration with suppliers, producers and partners such as Cwm Taf Morgannwg’s Central Processing Unit will be critical to creating the conditions that allow people to commit to change.”  

An Action Plan is currently being developed to help operationalise the project’s goals and embed them into Velindre’s operations. Whilst some performance indicators exist and can easily be measured, such as percentages of food coming from local suppliers, food waste reduction, staff accessing veg boxes and average days for patient recovery, others will need development, including a Patient Reported Outcome Measure for food and the Social Return on Investment for the local food economy. 

Chris believes that this whole-system approach is necessary both to tackle the challenges within the current food system and to demonstrate the full range of benefits that can be delivered by values-based healthcare. We look forward to reporting more as the project progresses. 

This commitment has been broadly welcomed but its implementation brings to light many challenges currently faced by local authorities, catering staff, suppliers and others involved in school meal provision. These range from inadequate kitchen and dining facilities in schools not designed with universal school meal provision in mind, to the disconnect between what pupils learn about food and nutrition, and the experience of their school meal.  

To better understand how these challenges might be resolved, Cynnal Cymru is convening a series of roundtables to bring together those working in the different policy and operational areas of school meal provision. Our first, in May 22, was held primarily to learn from the experience of implementing universal free school meals (uFSM) in primary schools in Scotland, where the commitment is for all primary school children to have free school meals by August 2022. 

The speakers were Prof. Mary Brennan, University of Edinburgh Business School and Chair of the Scottish Food Coalition and Jayne Jones, Commercial Manager at Argyll & Bute Council and Chair of Assist FM –a non-profit association working to promote the facilities management services of all member local authorities in Scotland. The roundtable was chaired by Prof. Kevin Morgan from Cardiff University.  

Below is a summary of some key points shared by the presenters and attendees. The full meeting notes are also available. 

uFSM must be seen as a vehicle for multiple policy objectives 

The role that school food has to play in enhancing public health and well-being must be looked at in a context extending far beyond just provision of nutrition and calories. School food matters to many cross-cutting themes and is at the heart of a ‘good food nation’. 

Dining together in schools helps children develop important, but sometimes overlooked, eating and social skills, where new tastes and food combinations can be introduced in a safe environment and norms around use of cutlery and avoiding waste can be set. Social eating also provides an opportunity for relaxation that aids afternoon learning.  Alongside the immediate benefits, these things will also help shape future food and lifestyle choices. 

In terms of the wider school community, the experience in Scotland suggests that universal provision benefits all families including those with time or knowledge constraints, as well as financial ones. 

Universal provision can also provide local economic multipliers particularly if there is investment in building links with local businesses.  It can be a driver for high quality farming and fishing, enhancing animal welfare and supporting and creating new routes to market for food businesses. It can also be an opportunity to trial methods of procurement and production compliant with Net Zero and nature recovery ambitions.  

Mary Brennan argues that what is needed is an annual forensic analysis to understand how uFSM provision is contributing to other policy areas in Scotland but this has not so far happened. 

It is essential to develop systems thinking capacity to understand how school food can deliver across different policy areas 

One of the biggest challenges in Scotland has been getting Ministers and officials to understand the operational realities and challenges that school catering staff face. The school canteen is a relentless and demanding operational environment and staff are usually not employed outside term-time or food preparation/supervision/clean-up times. There is therefore no time or space for strategic thinking to review, reflect or plan. The same is often true with local authorities with very little resource, which can lead to paralysis and a default to doing things the way they have always been done rather than trying to maximise or diversify policy outcomes. 

In Scotland, Assist FM argued for investment in management as well as frontline staff to aid the transition to uFSM in recognition of the need for this thinking and planning time and to ensure they weren’t spreading already stretched management staff too thinly. 

It is not just the food that should be valued  

The key role of dining staff in school has also been recognised in Scottish research. The extent of many of the benefits of social eating in schools – particularly around the amount of time spent eating (and therefore producing less waste) – was found to correlate directly with the amount of dining supervision available, yet the hours and numbers of dining supervisors are often vulnerable to cost-cutting.  

This links to another obstacle in expanding uFSM provision – the recruitment and retention of supervision and catering staff. Scottish research suggests that recognising more overtly the insights and contributions from these staff can expedite successful uFSM implementation, through staff development and providing space for learning and professionalisation of school catering. Attendees agreed that the whole food sector – from farming to catering – needs to be understood and promoted as a career path. 

Conclusions and next steps 

Implementing uFSM may involve complex trade-offs but there is also the potential for multiple co-benefits from a singular investment. In Wales this is a key opportunity to look at food through the lens of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act, incorporating net zero, nature recovery, equality, foundational economy and other aims. 

The clearest outcome from this session was that the ‘cost’ of school food needs to be reframed as an investment in better health and environmental outcomes and an investment in our learners (as opposed to just investing in the learning itself). We hear of redefining ‘value’ in public procurement to include the social and environmental value created from spending public money. With the publication of the Social Partnerships and Public Procurement Bill this shift should now be at the forefront of government’s mind. The provision of uFSM is an opportunity to put this into practise. 

Future sessions will consider how this investment can be made and how other operational challenges raised but not included in this piece can be resolved. These include how to increase flexibility within menu design to be able to cope rising food prices, uncertainty of supply and other ‘what if..’ scenarios; the challenges faced by schools with insufficient or no catering facilities; and how this policy aim can also support a more diverse and progressive food system in Wales, including links with the Community Food Strategy. 

If you would like to join future roundtables or have ideas or comments around this or future themes, please contact Clare Sain-ley-Berry clare@cynnalcymru.com. 

In 2019 Hywel Dda University Health Board took a bold step to start an Apprenticeship Academy. This was partly in response to the increasing financial costs of using agency staff to make up for the shortfall in employed Adult General Nurses. It was also, however, in recognition of the opportunity that the University Health Board had, as an anchor institution, to improve opportunities and well-being in its local area.

Recruitment had been a long-standing problem. There is no nursing college in the local area and those that have studied elsewhere, and begun to make lives for themselves, often prefer to find work in the same place. Recruitment from within local communities has therefore been a challenge, as even those students originating from the UHB area may not always choose to return once qualified. The UHB was also conscious that recruitment practices that simply attracted staff from other health board areas would just create problems elsewhere. A programme that could nurture and develop skills amongst the existing local population was seen as a more pragmatic, sustainable approach and one that would fit with the UHB’s values. The Apprenticeship Academy was therefore born.

The initial apprenticeship programme included two pathways: Healthcare and Patient Experience. This has already expanded to include many other pathways including areas as diverse as Engineering and Corporate Governance. The Healthcare Apprentice Programme, however, which can develop individuals from entry level to Nurse registration within seven years, remains its flagship. Its aim is to develop a future nursing workforce through targeted skills development, working with local employment organisations, educational institutions and youth organisations to promote and tailor apprenticeship opportunities. 

The establishment of the Academy has, of course, faced challenges, not least in the unprecedented number of applications and onboarding of apprentices. In 2021 alone there were over 600 applicants, with only 40 places on offer. The high standard of applicants, however, did provide the UHB with confidence to increase the places on offer to 57.

A secondary challenge was integrating the apprenticeship programme within the culture and working practices of a large, established workforce. To help navigate this, a ‘Reverse Mentoring’ scheme was put in place that has allowed apprentices to share their experiences and ideas through providing mentoring and guidance to members of the Health Board. Apprentices were also invited, with the Board’s support, to present at the 2021 Nursing and Midwifery conference, in recognition of their achievements. This gave members of the apprenticeship programme another opportunity to share learning first hand with those that might also find themselves working with apprentices, or even be thinking of starting programmes themselves.

One example of the value that this programme has brought was highlighted when the Academy Team was able to offer additional support to the Directors responsible for the staffing and implementation of Mass Vaccination Centres throughout the Health Board area.  Andrew Cavill (Job title) explains that the 2021 apprentices “have stepped up and stepped forward to support the vaccination effort, undertaking additional training to offer immunisation and administrative support to patients across all counties”.

The programme has also contributed to wider and longer-term benefits. The Academy has a principle of not taking on an apprentice unless there is a job available for that person at the end of the apprenticeship programme. This has encouraged services to look at their future staffing needs and start to plan early for how these can be met. On this basis, 100 apprentices have already been taken on with a pledge to deliver 1,000 apprenticeships by 2030 – an ambition that will not only grow local job opportunities but help to provide better health care, training, skills and well-being in the local foundational economy.