Hospital food situation ‘diabolical’ as report shows half fail to meet standards

By The Press Association26th January 2017News EnglandFood, Food Poverty, Hospitals, News Scotland, NHS, Nutrition

Half of hospitals are failing to meet Government standards for hospital food, a new report says.

Rules have been set down to drive up standards, with 10 key areas for hospitals to follow. These include screening people to identify those who are malnourished or at risk of the condition, as well as providing “flexible” meals and drinks across the day and night to meet people’s needs.

But new data from the Department of Health shows that, while things are improving, only 54% of hospitals are fully compliant with the rules.

Over 90% are either fully or partly compliant – some 1,174 NHS hospitals.

Overall, 48% do not meet Government buying standards that give hospitals basic standards to meet on food quality, nutrition, environmental sustainability and animal welfare.

The report also found that just over half (51%) of hospitals have meals delivered on site while 33% have “cook-serve” catering (where the meal is cooked from scratch on the premises).

Katherine Button, from the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, said: “The situation in hospital food standards is diabolical. When the hospital food standards were brought in two years ago, we were promised that these hospital food standards were legally binding.

“With half of hospitals still not meeting even the basic standards, we can now see that this is demonstrably not the case. This means that sick children in hospital wards are not getting the same quality of food that they are legally required to be fed at school when they are well.

“Enough is enough – we need equal legal protections for hospital food, like the protections that exist for food in schools and prisons.”

Katharine Jenner, from Consensus Action on Salt, Sugar and Health, said: “This is yet more evidence that voluntary measures don’t work, even when they’re dressed up as ‘legally binding’ in NHS standard contracts for hospitals.

“We need mandatory standards, with rigorous monitoring, reporting and meaningful sanctions for non-compliance. Whilst the Department of Health has presented this report as showing progress on compliance, the report should be renamed as a record of non-compliance. The statistics it reveals are shocking.”