A team of wagamama chefs recently visited HMP Swansea to deliver cooking classes to inspire inmates to become chefs following their release.

The team, headed by Food Development Chef Jamie Henderson, and the area chef for Wales, Henry Staple fed hundreds of prisoners with food prepared by their peers at local B category HMP Swansea.

The chefs were joined by the 15 inmates who are interested in a job in hospitality upon release and took over the prison kitchen for the day.

Together they created about 450 portions of mouth-watering dishes including chicken katsu curry.

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National tourism agency, VisitBritain has this week started rolling out its new multi-million pound international campaign for 2023 to drive tourism to Britain.

The international GREAT Britain marketing campaign invites visitors to ‘See Things Differently’, showcasing Britain as a dynamic, diverse and exciting destination, packed full of activities to come and enjoy now, with a warm British welcome at its heart.

The first phase of the 2023 campaign, with a budget of £9.8 million, gets underway this week and runs until early spring focused on markets where VisitBritain is seeing strong recovery including the USA.

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Wandsworth Council has developed a School Food Strategy to make sure more children get access to free nutritious meals.

The Children’s Committee will be asked to support the development of a Children’s School Food Strategy, working in partnership with community partners and families. The aim is to help families struggling with food insecurity as the cost of living worsens.

According to research 3% of primary school children in Wandsworth have nothing to eat for breakfast and 17% of secondary school pupils don’t eat lunch.

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Bolton Council’s school meals catering managers have attended a Vegetarian Society Cookery School in Altrincham to give them the knowledge and skills to create their own vegetarian and vegan options for schoolchildren.

The course was run by expert tutors and the dishes will be tested by pupils at the start of the new year in September. Plant-based foods are rich in nutrients which helps to support people’s immune system and reduces the risk of suffering from diet-related diseases.

Bolton Council’s executive cabinet member for environmental services delivery.

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The PSC100 Group has asked for reassurance from the Government that public food services will be prioritised in all food policy decisions in the coming year and beyond. The PSC100 was formed in 2009 and is an alliance of public sector organisations that deliver catering services within schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, care homes, prisons and the armed forces across the UK. Between them they deliver more than 2bn meals a year, serving up to 15m people on a typical weekday. Matthew White, chair of the PSC100 Group said in the letter, “Each year our professional collective comes together to discuss topics of mutual interest, best practice, and workforce support. 'This year, at our annual round table event hosted at the Palace of Westminster.

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Catering staff at East Ayrshire Council are celebrating as they have maintained their Food for Life Served Here gold award for another year, ensuring that pupils in 55 premises in the area continue to enjoy fresh, local and sustainable school meals.

Gold level award holders spend at least 15% of the ingredients budget for their service on organic produce, source a significant proportion of ingredients from UK producers and take further steps to make healthy eating easier.

East Ayrshire Council first achieved the Food for Life Served Here gold award in 2008.

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Argyll and Bute Council’s schools catering service has received The Soil Associations’ bronze Food for Life Served Here Award for the tenth year in a row.

The 2022 accreditation also includes meal provision in the area’s early years settings, meaning that even more young people are benefitting from healthy and sustainable school meals.

The council has been working with the Soil Association for several years, ensuring that their preparation, ingredients and practices meet the high standards required to achieve bronze award status.

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In a UK first, Argyll and Bute Council is teaming up with leading drone specialists Skyports to trial the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in delivering school meals to pupils in remote areas.

Flying from Oban Airport, the trial involves delivering meals freshly prepared in Park Primary School in Oban to Lochnell Primary, which is 1.5km away. All P1-P5 pupils are entitled to free school meals, as are all pupils in early years as part of Scotland’s 1,140 hours a year of childcare scheme.

Argyll and Bute is Scotland’s second largest local authority with 23 inhabited islands.

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School meals in 57 Tower Hamlets primary and nursery schools have achieved a silver award for being healthy and sustainable.

The council’s school meals provider, Contract Catering Services has achieved a Silver Food for Life Served Here award from the Soil Association for the third year in a row.

The Silver award recognises that at least 5% of ingredients are organic and are sourced sustainably, ethically, and locally from reputable suppliers. The award acknowledges caterers that go beyond meeting the School Food Standards to ensure that children are served meals that are not only delicious.

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Tower Hamlets Council is looking for a ‘motivated, experienced and collaborative’ individual to lead an exciting, wide-ranging programme to transform school meals in Tower Hamlets and ensure that all their primary school children enjoy a healthy, enjoyable school food experience.

This is an exciting opportunity to lead an ‘innovative and high-priority transformation’ programme to deliver a healthy, sustainable and socially valuable school food system.

Working closely with partners across public health.

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The Eating Better alliance has published a report titled ‘Serving better: better menus make better choices’ ahead of Public Sector Catering’s second Plant-Based Week, which is taking place from 9-13 May 2022. The report includes top tips to help and encourage public sector caterers to introduce more plant-based dishes to their menus. More and more chefs are being trained to develop exciting plant-based dishes for the public sector as the industry as a whole looks to reduce its carbon emissions. Andy Jones, chair of the PSC100 Group, said, “We are working closely with the industry to develop menus which show our commitment to increasing plant-based meals while using less but better quality meat produced to higher animal welfare and environmental standards.

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The former Cabinet Works site in the centre of Warrington is being sold by Warrington Borough Council via Christie & Co.

Situated in Barbauld Street, the 0.385-acre (0.15 ha) site is in close proximity to the council’s £142m Time Square development, which includes a new state-of-the-art, 13 screen, 2,500 seat multiplex cinema operated by Cineworld, as well as several restaurants, an impressive market hall, new council offices, a 1,160-space multi-storey car park and a new civic square.

Building on the success of Time Square.

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A campaign is underway across North Yorkshire to encourage more families to take up school meals as an affordable and healthy way to feed their children.

As family budgets face ever more pressure from the rising cost of living, school meals offer a hot and nutritious meal every day for children.

North Yorkshire County Council's school meals service provides millions of meals a year to pupils in the county.

But as schools get back into full swing following the pandemic.

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The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has created a Public Sector Food and Catering guide for small to medium-sized enterprises to help them support the efforts of catering buyers to procure more British produce. The document has been created with input from the Public Sector Catering 100 Group, which includes the following national catering organisations - LACA (school meals) the National Association of Care Catering (NACC), The University Caterers Organisation (TUCO), the Hospital Caterers Association (HCA), ASSIST FM (Scottish local authority service providers) and the Professional Association of Catering Education (PACE). Other bodies whose consultation helped shape the new guide include NHS Supply Chain.

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The prison population in England and Wales is projected to increase to 98,500 (23.7%) by March 2026, according to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Justice. Matched by an intention to build space for 20,000 extra prison places, this would take numbers to an all-time high for the two countries. This is largely a result of the recruitment of an extra 23,400 police officers, which is likely to increase charge volumes and therefore increase the future prison population. The prison population in England and Wales was 79,580 as of the end of 2021. It is projected to increase in the short term, rising to pre-COVID (from February 2020) population by July 2022, then keep increasing steadily to reach 97.

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An unprecedented expansion and refurbishment programme will create more than 4,000 new prison places across the country, the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab announced. These new places are part of the government’s £4bn investment to create 20,000 modern and innovative prison places, ensuring the right conditions are in place to truly rehabilitate prisoners. This will give prisoners the education, skills and addiction support they need to live crime-free lives on release, helping to cut crime and protect the public. The 4,000 places announced today will be created across 16 prisons through the building of new wings and refurbishing jails. They will create thousands of jobs for local communities.

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The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has confirmed that Minister of State Victoria Prentis will be delivering a keynote address to the PSC Expo, which takes place at the NEC in Birmingham from15-16 March.

Prentis (pictured) will tackle the issue of Government Buying Standards when she speaks to the Expo via Zoom on the morning of Tuesday, 15 March.

She will be outlining particular areas ripe for revision, such as encouraging the public sector to buy more British food to support growers and farmers in the UK and reduce the sector’s carbon footprint through the use of more sustainable produce.

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Caterlyst Insights has predicted the following for Public Sector: • MoD remains an important sector for those contract caterers that specialise in this area • Canteens and cafes in MoD sites need to compete with the high street driven by PAYD • A sector that will experience minimal growth or decline, will not be effected by economic turbulence • Health and wellness alongside more plant based meal options will be a focus within both MoD sites and HMP sites • Centralised and standardised menus for UK prisons • More focus on nutritionally balanced dishes and menus including brain health within prisons • Continued pressure on costs within the prison system (image: https://prisonjobs.blog.

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According to Caterlyst Insights, Public Sector makes up 0.4% of the Foodservice Industry value. Key market stats include: • Number of sites: 2,220 • Market value: £420m • Meals served: 209m • Contract catered sites: 26% Prisons • Number of prisons: 257 prisons, 14 are privately run • Number of prisoners: 77k (men), 3k (women) • Number of prison meals served per year: 88m • Average daily prison meal spend: £2.15 MoD • Number of MoD sites in the UK: 444 • Number of full time UK Armed Forces personnel: 142k • MoD's Pay As You Dine (PAYD) rates for meals: Breakfast £1.32, Lunch £1.80, Dinner (main meal) £2.17, Packed Meal Rate £1.92, Cold Snack meal £0.82 (image: https://www.

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Flavour Fest - the south west’s largest food and drink festival is set to return to Plymouth city centre Piazza in Devon between Friday 27th and Sunday 29th May 2022.

The festival will host hundreds of traders showcasing the best regional produce, cookery demonstrations, regional cookery stars, stalls showcasing local delicacies and live music.

For further information please visit https://www.flavourfestsw.co.uk/