Released 21 July 2023
Request:
1. Budget: What is the annual £ budget on Patient and Employee Food?
2. Procurement: Is food purchased direct from within the Trust via procurement business partners, or a third-party supplier like Compass/FoodBuy?
If internally, who are the colleagues responsible?
3. Patient Meals: What is the average, per head £cost, per day of patient food?
4. Does the Trust purchase Frozen Ready Meals? If so, how many per year (quantity or £ is fine)?
5. % of total meals that are vegetarian
Information disclosed:
1. Patient Food Budget for the financial year April 2022 to March 2023: £3,326,624
Employee Food Budget for the same period: Nil
2. Food is purchased directly by the Trust from third-party suppliers.
The disclosure of names and further contact details are exempt under section 40(2) [personal information] exemption of the Act.
3. Actual average spend for the financial year April 2022 to March 2023 across the Trust: £5.44 per patient per day.
4 and 5. For the following questions, whilst we are in the process of aligning services under the merged Trust, our legacy catering services continue to function individually to ensure there is no disruption to these services and our response reflects this.
Our response relative to Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton [RSCH]; and Princess Royal Hospital, Haywards Heath [PRH] is provided below:
These hospitals purchase both plated and bulk frozen meals for patient feeding. Spend figures as follows:
Total spend PRH £326,633.84 of which vegetarian spend was £42,358.19 (13%)
Total spend RSCH £728,281.77 of which vegetarian spend was £133,529.23 (18%)
Our response relative to St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester and Worthing Hospital, Worthing is provided below:
These hospitals buy in frozen ready meals to allow for hot food over a full 24-hour period. The yearly spend is £8,000, and 20% of this is vegetarian.