The Department authorises the expenditure of public funds on food and drink only where it is in the public interest and conducive to the conduct of public business. Such expenditure is in the context of a Department of over 100,000 staff dealing, on a daily basis, with many thousands of employers, suppliers and other partners.
In 1998 the Department entered into a 20 year Private Finance Initiative deal with Trillium, known as the PRIME Contract, for the provision of fully serviced accommodation, including catering, for which the Department pays a fully inclusive unitary charge. Services are delivered through a network of Service Partners and Trillium’s Service Partner for catering is Eurest. Local suppliers are used where Eurest is unable to provide a service at a particular site. Expenditure with Eurest for the three years and with the other suppliers for 2006-07 and 2007-08 is provided in the following table.
Non-Eurest expenditure information for 2005-06 is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. Detail is provided for the top five suppliers only, as there are almost 400 other suppliers.
Supplier Expenditure1(£) 2005-06 Eurest 540,000 Total 540,000 2006-07 Eurest 590,000 O’Briens Sandwich Bar 40,000 Le Mange Tout 20,000 Northern Land and Leisure 10,000 Archers Catering 10,000 Celebration Caterers 10,000 Others 220,000 Total 900,000 2007-08 Eurest 760,000 MacLellan International Ltd. 90,000 O’Briens Sandwich Bar 40,000 Northern Land and Leisure 40,000 Compact Catering 40,000 Amanda’s 20,000 Others 620,000 Total 1,610,000 1 In December 2006 a software improvement was introduced on the Department’s Resource Management (RM) computer system, which enabled hospitality to be captured more accurately for the last three months of 2006-07 and for all of 2007-08. While the effect of this has caused an apparent increase in hospitality between 2006-07 and 2007-08, there is no evidence that actual hospitality expenditure has increased.