A two way alert service using a website to identify both producers with crops to sell and food service managers, is being planned by the South East Food Group Partnership.

Apart from potential sourcing it will list seasons and identify when English produce is most plentiful - and therefore cheapest - as well as giving producers a chance to showcase their food, including fresh fruit and vegetables.

Funded through Defra, its brief covers Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Seminars designed to encourage both parties to be aware of the benefits that each offer are being held, and Melissa Love, public sector procurement manager for SEFGP, expects that in partnership with the English Food Consortium a group with be set up in the autumn in time to benefit from when contracts go out next year.

She expects the website to be operational by this time, after which SEFGP will consider applications for registration provided applicants can show that they carry out full traceability and food safety procedures.

Transforming food purchasing practices to include small local growers takes time. One of the major stumbling blocks that research has shown is that there is no definition of what comprises local food, although the 30 mile radius is used as a yardstick.

More significantly, because contracts with hospitals and schools are often large and worth over £1 million, many growers have felt they are too small to get involved in a sector where because of budgetary constraints, low margins, high volumes and copious paperwork operate.

Less of a problem, it appears, is that contracts are not allowed to specify local produce, although Love said this could be counteracted by using general terms like fresh and seasonal.

But with public interest and demand for local food, local authorities are now seeing the value of offering seasonally related menus. Indeed, things are changing, according to Wendy Neal-Smith of Surrey Food Links, the county organisation within the scheme. "I hope we are at the start of a rising curve," she told suppliers and providers at a seminar held at Farnham Castle, Surrey last week.

Love added that buyers should get to know their suppliers better by arranging visits to farms with their wholesalers to see production first hand. There was also a case for following the path taken by multiples by identifying growers on literature used in hospitals and schools.

Meanwhile, Hampshire has become a success story for local sourcing after five years hard work, with Kent showing signs of following suite.

Certainly there are prizes to be won. Love estimates that the market serving in these counties is worth over £150 million, of which only 10-15 percent at present is sourced locally.

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