October update

The Infrastructure Working Group met in September and discussed progress on the Action Plans including the below. Scroll down for progress from the Procurement Working Group that also met in September. 

• South Bristol Talent Pathway Project (SBTaPP) continues to support small businesses and individuals to begin a career in food. Starting in October 2023, the Food Talent Pathway Project (FTaPP) element of the Food Sector Colocation Hub project (FSCLH) will link the redevelopment of commercial area in St Nicholas Markets to all small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the food supply-chain in Bristol. FTaPP will offer these SMEs opportunities to develop their workforce, including support accessing apprenticeships, learning and skills providers and making connections with the future workforce through work tasters and experiences in local schools. Before completion in March 2025, FTaPP will ensure that 150 SMEs are engaged and supported, 75 people receive support, of which 50 will gain a vocational license, and 33 will gain employment.

• Bristol Works continues to provide work experience in food and hospitality for students attending schools with high numbers of NEET students: Bristol Works has delivered 169 experiences of work between January to July 2023 – all of these were for learners within a SEND provision / Alternative Learning Provision. This has included workshops with Waitrose, Soil Association, Food WorksSW and Redcatch Community Garden. As well as work experience tasters with IBIS Hotel, Step and Stone, Aztec Hotel and Spa, Brewhouse & Kitchen, The Bristol Hotel, Mollie’s Motel, Square Food Foundation, Inns Court Garden, Mochi Bros and Avon Gorge Hotel.
   
• Bristol City Council Economic Inclusion team and Bristol Living Wage City asked Working Group members to reach out to businesses and persuade them to become accredited with the Real Living wage campaign: due to the cost-of-living crisis it is very difficult for businesses to keep up their accreditation. For food businesses energy costs and ingredient costs are a big factor, but on the plus side, many realise they need to pay the real living wage to recruit staff. Six food businesses have got living wage accreditation this year. It looks like the need to recruit for some and also ethical considerations may be driving the accreditation.
   
• BCC is investigating options for freight consolidation: soft market testing for study work has been concluded. There is continued business interest in freight consolidation more broadly, but lack of available data from the freight sector more generally makes it challenging to plan.
   
• Fareshare SouthWest is able to relabel and repackage food: limited progress on relabelling and repackaging. Some relabelling is happening but there are concerns about controls to ensure allergen information is consistent which is restricting developments. Repackaging is not possible within the existing facility space – the ‘clean room’ needed for this could be part of a move to larger facilities. Investment has now been made in labelling equipment. Fareshare is making infrastructural improvements allowing them to freeze more and process more in-house. FareShare Southwest is investing in freezer capacity to help mitigate the surplus food issues. The development and expansion of a facility to enable the storage and distribution of frozen food was completed end of July 2023. However, the availability of surplus food is not keeping up with demand.
• The action on the Avon Gleaning Network and Fareshare SouthWest collaboration with RaviOllie to turn gleaned vegetables into dishes that charities can use, needs progress.
   
• Wild Goose Café has applied for a grant from the Household Support Fund via Feeding Bristol to improve long-term resilience to providing healthy balanced meals and reducing food waste. This was approved, but Wild Goose is still waiting for the funds to come through in order to purchase the blast chiller. 15-20kg of surplus food is being shared with a local church, alongside checking they are aware of shelf life, information regarding allergens, pre-packaging and safety in line with Natasha’s Law. Food waste has been reduced at the café from an average of 7.5kg a day (with the majority of that being the makeup of the meals, for example potato peelings) to about 5kg.
   
• Bountiful Bristol (BB) continues to redistribute allotment surplus, expanding the project into East Bristol. BB is continuing to redistribute food from the four allotment sites set up as ‘grow it forward’ partnerships in 2022 – currently applying for funding to be able to expand this to 14 ‘grow it forward’ partnerships and run a number of workshops to connect and inspire allotment members to donate.
   
• Wessex Water is interested in co-funding a PhD project to look at the socio-cultural factors involved with food waste, with an aim to better develop campaigns and actions to reduce food waste. If anyone from Bristol Good Food 2030 is interested in being involved, it would be great to hear from them.  

The Procurement Working Group met in September and discussed progress on the Action Plans including: 

• North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) is in the process of procuring a digital patient meal service which should reduce food waste. NBT is also phasing out single-use plastics in the staff restaurant in preparation for the October 2023 single-use plastics ban. NBT also welcome comments and guidance from Bristol Good Food organisations on what to include in the tender spec and evaluation for the procurement strategy for a new catering provider. NBT will also adopt relevant statements from the Government’s Buying Standard for Food and Catering Services; packaging will contain limited single-use plastic and must be reusable, widely recyclable or compostable; and produce is to be seasonal, fairtrade and locally sourced. There is an opportunity to work with NHS Supply Chain to ensure carbon footprinting requirements and sustainability criteria are included in all tenders for catering. A new Sustainable Food Working Group across NBT and University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW) will work on projects and opportunities to reduce food waste, reduce carbon footprint of meals and to improve service provision.
   
• University of Bristol will run education campaigns encouraging staff and students to carry out carbon literacy training and implement carbon-reducing activities. All halls menus are now carbon-mapped using Klimato, and training has started with the new student body. The aim is to reduce carbon by 25% and reductions are monitored on a monthly basis (85% of halls food is now low-carbon scoring). The universities plan on serving less and better meat. The University of Bristol is making training available for chefs and new meat tender includes higher welfare options. University of Bristol will increase the percentage of local suppliers located within a 30-mile radius of the Central Bristol Campus from 50% to 60%. Finally, there is an ongoing targeted campaign from University of Bristol residential support team in student halls, targeting students who, on average, are less good at recycling than their pre-covid counterparts.

• The ongoing Bristol Food Network work with University of the West of England on research to expand efficient short supply chains is no longer happening due to an unsuccessful funding bid.
   
• Future Leap is supporting businesses to calculate their carbon footprint as part of improving their sustainability: currently they have just three food industry clients. Future Leap has tried to reach out to hospitality businesses, but times and margins are tough and the consultancy costs are proving prohibitive for many. Future Leap is completing carbon footprinting / assessment work with Clifton Coffee and Pieminister. They have found that the level of internal engagement is high and the benefits of the net zero agenda is well understood. As with all carbon footprinting, data provision can be tricky, especially when trying to accurately assess the embodied carbon of foods. They have now built tools to model the carbon footprint of menus and will be marketing this as a service over the coming months.
   
• Bristol City Council will request a carbon reduction plan for all relevant contracts above Public Procurement Value Thresholds: this action is already in place for BCC and has so far been included in the Food for Schools contract. In early 2024 there will be a review of the BCC health and sustainability requirements, which may include mandating a carbon reduction plan (rather than scoring and evaluating as done now). Bristol City Council will make sure that the relevant health and sustainability requirements are embedded into the contract and contract monitoring: this is already in place for BCC and BCC is advocating this approach within the region. Guidance has been created for contract managers on how to assess whether the KPI for Social Value and Sustainability is being met during the life of the contract.
• Requirements have been embedded into the Catering Dynamic Purchasing System for Parks and into the Harbourside Festival spec for 2024 onwards. The ‘how to’ guide on creating a sustainable procurement policy is developed and shared via Bristol Good Food 2030 platforms and linked to the One City Climate Action page. Bristol City Council is developing a Dynamic Purchasing System for the Parks catering and this will be done by early 2024.