Custodial Review last visited HMP Parc, near Bridgend, four years ago to look at the way Catering Manager Kevin Goodall operated the external kitchen. This was unusual at the time, and we were interested in how it had worked.

Parc then had a prisoner population of 880 and serviced South Wales as a training prison. It’s still operated by G4S for the National Offender Management Service (part of the Ministry of Justice).

A lot of building work is in progress at the prison to increase its capacity, which will make it one of the largest prisons in the UK. 

The last time we spoke, you were the Catering Manager with responsibility for the prisoner kitchen and catering for the staff. Now you are sitting in an office, with a big title on the door and a view from a first floor window; though it is over a building site! What has developed in the last four years?
Kevin Goodall The title on the door is ‘Operational Support Services Manager’. I currently have responsibility for catering, catering training, stores, procurement, prisoner canteen, Health and Safety, Environmental and Waste Management, Property stores, some commercial negotiations, liaising over the facilities management contract, and I have been asked to set up an internal maintenance team as well.

This grew from the role I had four years ago and started when the requirement was identified for someone to assist in supervising the facilities management contract and looking after the prisoner canteen. Subsequently a management reorganisation identified that someone was required to manage Support Services. As the role of Catering Manager already had a large purchasing content to it, the skill sets of the two roles, and remember I also had experience with the FM contract and prisoner canteen. It seemed to be a good fit. So here I am!

So who is managing the kitchen now?
Kevin Goodall Paul Jeffreys is currently the temporary Catering Manager. He stood in nearly a year ago, and has coped with the kitchen being closed for upgrading, and he and his team have done a splendid job from a temporary kitchen.

Four years ago HMP Parc was a shiny prison that had been open for only eight years. What was the capacity then, what is being done now, what will the capacity be and what is your involvement in it?
Kevin Goodall It was about 1000 four years ago. The building work that you see from the window will raise it to 1670. This is over double our 1997 capacity of 820. We are building a new house block with five new wings and additional capacity in every other department.

What was the reasoning behind the main kitchen being built outside the walls?
Kevin Goodall  Space was the primary reason; there was not sufficient room to put a kitchen within the walls, which is even truer now.

The original catering concept was to have all meals prepared on plates in the external kitchen and regenerated on the wings. This was something I considered was not ideal, for operational and cost effective reasons. One good reason being that the food had to be heated twice and chilled once. The energy usage of this process alone is very wasteful.

So we changed that concept and adjusted the operation of the kitchen to suit. We now have a 50/50 split of freshly cooked and regenerated food which will change even further in the future to more freshly cooked items.
Another advantage of the external kitchen is that supplies arriving do not interrupt the work of the prison and they can deliver at times when it is convenient to them and us. We have to get hot food into the prison; however that is scheduled and is only one vehicle three times a day. On balance it’s right to have the main kitchen outside the prison walls.

Has there been anytime in the last 12 years when you would have preferred the kitchen inside? Are there things you feel are missing because of it?
Kevin Goodall  It depends on the point of view. From a caterers point of view it’s better outside and from a commercial viewpoint, it’s better inside.

The caterers’ viewpoint is more than just the easy access for suppliers; there is also the staff issue. It’s easier to get to work. Cost savings can be tied into ease of delivery, security is easier too as we don’t have unopened packages entering a secure area.

However, it does prolong the time from the completion of cooking to the food arriving on the plate. It’s only a few minutes more, but it does add some time. From the commercial point of view, we do not employ prisoner labour, so our staffing costs are higher and we cannot offer NVQ’s or carry out training of prisoners, so the educational opportunities are reduced, however we are doing something to change that.

I noticed that the old kitchen is closed; this must present some difficulties. What is the prison capacity today and how are you feeding them whilst the kitchen is being expanded?
Kevin Goodall  The capacity today is 1200 rising to 1670. And we have had a temporary kitchen installed supplied by Elliott Kitchens to fill the gap whilst the kitchen is being expanded.

We have redesigned our process of meal production. You will recall that the kitchen originally had a staff dining area next to it. This is now being moved inside the walls and the area has been converted into a larger catering area with more freezers, chillers dry stores and a larger trolley area. But it is more than just expansion. The external kitchen is now solely for the production of food for prisoners. We have built a new staff dining facility inside the walls which will change the dynamics of meal breaks for the people who will use it.

So you are catering for the prisoners outside the walls and for the staff inside the walls! On the face of it that seems a little bit Alice in Wonderland! What are the reasons and how many staff are you feeding for lunch at present?
Kevin Goodall Yes it does seem strange, however once examined, it makes a lot of sense. We have a lot of staff coming through the key lock every mealtime on their way to the staff canteen.

This was causing a bottleneck and the security staff were being swamped. Staff also had to queue to get out and back in, so their meal breaks were being shortened. Many staff decided not to bother with the rigmarole involved and didn’t use the staff dining room at all.

An internal staff dining area will mean that the only customers who will now have to pass through security will be the few administrators who are based outside the walls. The majority of staff will now be able to visit the dining facility without any hindrance.

We are feeding about 170 staff every lunch time at the present time from a headcount of 630. This will rise to 800 when the expansion is complete with a commensurate increase in the number of diners. As the facility will be so close to their work place it will make sense to use it.

So how will it work, will you cook outside and bring the food in?
Kevin Goodall No, we are building cooking facilities inside, right next to the staff dining area. The staff dining facility will also become an integral part of the prisoner training unit.

This will fill a hole in the prisons educational provision. At present we only have two small training kitchens; these are used to teach prisoners life skills, such as the basics of cooking for themselves, healthy eating and food hygiene. These are the sort of skills they will need to survive in a flat or bedsit.

Because the main kitchen is outside the walls we have not had the facility to teach catering as NVQ’s etc, as many other prisons do. We see this as a major missed opportunity as there are still a lot of catering jobs on the outside and we have not been able to prepare our prisoners to take them up.

However, this will all change. We are putting in an industrial training kitchen. It is a 10-bay unit with industrial standard equipment. They will also be able to incorporate cake making, chocolate work and other specialist skill training. We will teach NVQ modules and a multimedia suite will be used in a classroom to aid the teaching of food hygiene and nutrition.

Pupils will then move to the staff dining area where they will complete their training preparing meals for the staff. We will be able to teach full modules to our own long-term prisoners and enable prisoners that have transferred in, to catch up on modules they may have missed. We will have a proper transition from formal classroom training all the way to preparing meals for customers. It’s a win- win situation.

So what qualifications could be gained in this new facility, what will be the throughput and what sort of food will be served?
Kevin Goodall We have not finalised that with learning and skills yet, however, it will include NVQ 1 & 2 and we will have a process of continual throughput so the numbers being trained will be considerable.

We have a 10-bay kitchen on the new site plus 20 places in the existing kitchens. So the 30 places will be constantly full and they will produce all types of food from serve yourself cafeteria style, plus cooked to order.

There will be three areas within the staff dining facility. One, a traditional servery style with ready to eat items. A dedicated sandwich bar similar to the high street delicatessens where you can order cold food to eat out.

There will also be a proper coffee shop where a barista will produce the full range of coffee you would expect in one of the major chains. It will have bistro style tables and chairs and a lounge area. It will provide space for meetings and a place for people to meet and talk. It will also provide prisoners with additional training opportunities in a large and growing market place.

So to sum it up, you are keeping the mass catering outside the walls to gain the efficiencies that brings whilst putting the low-run catering inside the walls where it can be used to train the prisoners and provide a facility that is convenient for staff use. It all makes a lot of sense when it’s thought about...
Kevin Goodall  That sums it up nicely, it seems strange, but makes a lot of sense.

As Facilities Management liaisons is one of your hats, how do you achieve ongoing maintenance here, and what procedures do you have in place for purchasing?
Kevin Goodall  We have a facilities management company who keep a team on site to do all the day-to-day maintenance. It’s the equivalent of a prison works department.

They are also responsible for all the external grounds maintenance, window cleaning etc. They don’t use prisoner labour at all, however I am looking into some internal jobs, such as window cleaning and other non-business critical tasks, being done by prisoners.

Purchasing is done by this prison; if we need something we can use the full range of commercial techniques to buy it. All our energy and water is purchased centrally as G4S being such a large company can use the economy of scale that provides.

For some items, there are centrally preferred suppliers, however, we can source our own if we wish. This enables us to structure our purchasing to suit this prison. To this end, I have recently employed a Procurement Manager to ensure that our strategy is correct in terms of price, total cost of ownership, ethical and environmental concerns. We are expanding and therefore will be spending more. We need to be fully professional in these areas.

Other than the kitchen, what else is being expanded to cope with the larger capacity?
Kevin Goodall  Every department we have expanded and remodelled: education, visits, the gym, industries, the healthcare etc, there has been a lot of investment. We have had a specialist internal buying team who have co-ordinated the acquisition of new equipment for the expansion.
This Project Team has been made up of heads of departments and are answerable to the new build Project Manager. It has its own specialist purchasing manager.

Forecasting 8 to 10 months into the future, what do you see?
Kevin Goodall  A larger prison with the ability to provide greater achievements than the smaller prison had. From the perspective of the kitchen, we will have moved out of the temporary kitchen that Elliott Kitchens provided, and will have the expanded kitchen fully functioning.

On that topic, the temporary kitchen has been an outstanding success. The new Staff canteen and coffee shop should also make quite a difference to the life of the prison.

Thank you Kevin for talking to the Review.