Report on the Food Futures Board meeting held on March 12th, including information about Fare Share, the Food Futures Review day, and the Open Strategy planning software that is being  considered.

Fare Share
A presentation was made to the board by members of Fare Share which is a national charity that has set up a new operation at New Smithfields wholesale market in Gorton. The charity relieves food poverty by providing quality food and other support
services to organisations working with disadvantaged people in the
community. Fare Share contributes towards 3.3 million meals to 12,000 people in over 420 community projects. Fare Share has been linking with community and voluntary sector groups around the City, in order to develop its operations. As well as being able to supply affordable quality food to target groups, such as homeless  people, FS will be  providing  other services, including training in NVQs, food hygiene, and fork lift truck driving.

It may be useful for the various groups involved with the current FF Commissioning Programme to contact Fare Share, to investigate the potential for fee food hygiene training. Tel: 0161 437 1363. Email: copperdale_trust@hotmail.com.


Strategic Review
FF is planning a half day strategic review, and the date is to be set for the middle of May. This will be open to participation by board members, steering group members, and a limited amount of other people. This is an opportunity therefore for additional members of the Health Inequalities Pool to have some input into the strategy.

• The planning day is timed to co-incide with the release of the new Cabinet Office report called Food: an analysis of the issues, with the intention that any recommendations in this report can be considered in the strategic planning of FF.
• In addition, we (Creative Local Solutions) are aiming to complete our Stage 1 report for the Strategic Bid to the Local Food Fund in advance of this event, as we believe that the information in this will be relevant to the discussions on the day.

Open Strategy
FF has been considering for a while whether to purchase the services of Open Strategy, which is web based software, designed to engage multiple user groups in strategic planning processes. There are clear benefits to using the software, but the big issue is that it is very expensive: c.£2,000 / month, which would blow a large hole in the FF programme budget. It was agreed by the board to negotiate a four month trial of the software with Open Strategies Ltd. This is to include some additional training, and opportunities may well be available for Pool members to attend this.

Options are being looked at by FF to share the cost of the software, by making it it a strategic planning tool that is open to wider participation than just Food Futures stakeholders.

Creative Local Solutions is also undertaking a brief assessment of the software, as part of the development of the strategic bid to the Local Food Fund. In particular we need to assess how the Open Strategy planning process relates to, or 'maps on to' the BIG Lottery Outcomes planning approach. Although I can see the clear benefits of the software, my experience of database driven web technology suggests to me that the database engine behind the software is not very complex, and that for the amount of money that Open Strategies Ltd charges, it would be feasible to finder a cheaper (genuinely open source) alternative, or even pay for the development of our own software. Perhaps it could be developed as a Drupal module, and made freely available to people running sites such as this - that would be a fine gift to the global commons by the City of Manchester and the NHS! As part of our assessment of Open Strategy, we also intend to make a brief investigation of alternative software that does a similar job.

It is our opinion (Creative Local Solutions) that since Open Strategy is a multi-user tool, and that a large concern about the software is whether or not the Manchester community will use it, then a trial will not be effective, unless it tests out the community's willingness and ability to use the software.