Recipe 4 Health
Lancashire County Council, in partnership with the district councils in Lancashire, have been introducing Recipe 4 Health an award scheme which highlights caterers who help customers make healthy choices and also help the environment through their business practices.
The Award is in four parts (or tick)s:
Clean and Fair, the legislative section dealing with areas enforced by Trading Standards (TS) and Environmental Health (EH), is mandatory as the businesses must be compliant with the law in order to receive any further recognition. They are also assessed for each of the other areas and are awarded ticks in those areas where they meet the required grade.
Allergen/Alcohol Awareness, ensures they know which ingredients are allergenic, which are in the foods they supply and how to avoid cross contamination. It also ensures they know the law relating to alcohol sales and encourages them to operate designated driver schemes to promote responsible drinking.
Healthy Eating, encourages businesses to use fresh ingredients, prepare them in a healthy manner and clearly sign-post healthier options on menus.
Environmental Focus; deals with issues of reducing food air-miles, resource efficiency and responsible waste recycling and disposal.
Aims and Objectives
The scheme is aimed at businesses that provide ready to eat food. This includes cafes, restaurants, pubs, sandwich shops, takeaways, work/prison canteens and just recently children’s nurseries and elderly care homes. Whether a business is successful or not in achieving the award it provides us with an opportunity to give advice and guidance on, particularly, healthy eating issues and signpost them to other sources of information, such as the Food Standards Agency website and publications.
The scheme was piloted in the Chorley district of Lancashire. The details were originally developed in conjunction with the Northwest Food and Health Task Force, Envirowise and Chorley Council Environmental Health. Prior to the roll out to other districts in Lancashire the assessment details were further enhanced by working with the dieticians in East Lancashire PCT.
The scheme was launched in Chorley in October 2006 and is now being expanded progressively into all twelve districts of Lancashire. This scheme is currently running or about to start in seven out of the twelve district areas of Lancashire and we are hoping to complete the coverage throughout Lancashire by the end of 2009 - Environmental Health (EH) partners permitting.
Partners
- Lancashire County Council
- Other Borough Councils in Lancashire ; Chorley Council; Preston City Council; Burnley Council; Rossendale BC; Hyndburn Council; Borough of Pendle.
- Envirowise
- North West Food and Health Task Force
- East Lancashire PCT
Methodology
The administration for the scheme is done by Trading Standards (TS) to ensure uniformity and drive for it to become established throughout the county.
When a business applies to join the scheme they are sent a pack containing details of how the scheme works and the assessment sheets which are called Good Practice Guidelines (GPGs) and they are loaned an Allergen Training DVD for Caterers.
Once the business has had a chance to work on the assessment sheets and view the DVD, we make an assessment appointment and go through and complete their GPG details with them. EH will always assess the Food Safety part of the GPG and TS will always assess the Fair part of the GPG thus it is important to have a good line of communication. The other sections are assessed by either TS or EH officers.
If following assessment there are any areas that need improvement we advise accordingly on improvements necessary. Once they meet the grade they are issued with a certificate pack which also includes a window sticker and other notices and posters specifically designed for the project.
The award is valid for 18 months and we can then assess progress on any longer term actions agreed at the previous assessment. This time scale coincides with re-inspection intervals by EH thus adds no further burden of visit frequency.
Promotion
The scheme works by sending an initial letter and flyer with application form to a selected number of businesses inviting them to apply for the award. If they do not respond then a follow-up call is made to see if they would be interested in applying. Small groups are specifically targeted for the mail shot in order to generate manageable workloads as staff time and resources are finite.
However, there have been general advertisements in the Food publications by some district EH sections with details of the Recipe 4 Health website which includes an application form for applying. Very few businesses have come to apply for the scheme from this route though. As EH routinely inspect businesses if they come across one that would be likely to meet the grade they are given the flyer and encouraged to apply.
Resources
There was no specific funding allocated for this project. Lancashire County Council has found the funding from their normal food standards enforcement budget and contributions for specific items/events have been made by our partner authorities. However, these costs are escalating as more districts are brought into the scheme.
Thus, we are looking to market the scheme to any authorities that may be interested in purchasing it for use in their own areas. This will hopefully raise some revenue to support the administrative costs and allow us to provide some training to business sectors that are identified as needing this. Officers involved have had a few in house training sessions on areas which are not their normal areas of expertise.
Some staff both in TS and EH authorities have undergone diet and nutrition qualification training in order to be more competent to advise businesses in this respect. We have also doubled up on assessment visits to ensure all officers have the chance to gain as much experience as possible in assessments. Further training sessions will be set up to ensure we are all delivering in as uniform a way as possible.
Evaluation
In the Chorley pilot project we did not have any criteria set for success at the start. We knew that Chorley EH had attempted a trader award scheme independently without much success thus we did not really know what to expect.
Once the initial applicants had been processed we assessed the response and found we had managed to get 20% of target businesses involved. This was then set as the target for other districts as the scheme was rolled out to other parts of Lancashire. A feedback questionnaire was sent to Chorley businesses in June 2008, between three and six months after they had been awarded but at this stage the impact on the business had been minimal.
This and other methods of evaluation will need to be undertaken in the future.
Lessons Learned
Chorley was started with a launch event to which businesses were invited to hear what the scheme was about from partners involved in it. This launch event was fairly resource intensive and only resulted in a small number of the business coming forward that eventually received the award.
However, the number of applications that were received took some time to process, six months in some cases, and some businesses had lost interest by the time we got round to them. For this reason we now only invite small numbers to join at any one time. The administration over potentially twelve districts has been a huge logistical challenge.
The method of recording data and reporting with ever increasing numbers of officers involved, in different disciplines has had to be developed, tested and amended to ensure it is done in the most time and resource effective manner. We are still working on this as each new district is added to the scheme.
Future Developments
The main aim of the next 18 months is to effectively begin the scheme in all twelve districts of Lancashire. We need to work on the consumer awareness side of this scheme so that the businesses can be convinced of the value of following the Good Practice Guidelines on their business. Many are small, independent businesses that are sometimes struggling to keep going and we want this award to give them the competitive advantage over businesses that do not have the award.
We still need to work out ways of evaluating the impact of the scheme more effectively. This may be by consultation with individual businesses or by sampling and analysis of food or questioning of the public once the scheme is well established in an area.
Contact Details
Contact Name: Ms Aamena Kapasi
Job Title: Senior Trading Standards Officer (Recipe 4 Health Project Manager)
Phone: 01772 532761
Email: Aamena.kapasi@lancashire.gov.uk
Website: www.lancashire.gov.uk/Recipe4Health
Organisation: Lancashire County Council Trading Standards Service
Address: 58-60 Guildhall Street, Preston, Lancashire PR1 3NU
Other Resources: