Paper 12.3 Food and You 2: 3 Year Strategic Plan (2024-2027).

Summary

This paper provides an overview of our three-year strategic plan for Food and You 2. This paper is for information and discussion.

Background

Food and You 2 (F&Y2) is the FSA’s official statistic survey measuring self-reported attitudes, knowledge, and behaviour regarding food safety and other food-related issues amongst consumers in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It has an important role in measuring the FSA’s progress towards its strategic objectives, providing evidence to inform FSA policy making, and identifying where further action or research may be required.

We have successfully delivered 6 waves of F&Y2 since the survey was commissioned in 2019 following a review of the survey by the ACSS which provided recommendations on the future direction of the survey. Now the survey is well established, our focus has shifted to maximising use and impact, ensuring it continues to deliver value for money.

We have developed a strategy setting out our vision for the next three years and how we plan to achieve this. This was informed by a SWOT analysis which identified that our main weaknesses and opportunities were ensuring that F&Y2 is regularly used to inform policy and decision within the FSA and across Government and increasing awareness of the data within academia and industry to increase use and engagement.  

This will feed into a broader consumer monitoring strategy which will consider F&Y2 alongside our monthly Consumer Insights Tracker which was recommissioned in 2023 following a review by the ACSS which supported its continuation.

Overview of the Strategy

Vision

Our vision is for F&Y2 to be widely known and the data widely used within the FSA, across government, academia and third sector, helping to shape UK food policy. This means:

• F&Y2 is regularly used to drive policy and strategic decision making within the FSA.
• F&Y2 is regularly used to inform policy decisions made across UK Government.
• Academics are aware of and using the data in their own analysis adding to the evidence base on consumers’ interaction with food.
• Third sector/ NGOs/ industry are aware of F&Y2 and how insights can be used to support their work within the food system.

Actions

To achieve our vision, we will be:

Increasing academic engagement and celebrating 5 years of F&Y2

• To increase the use of F&Y2 data within academia, we will deliver presentations on the findings and methods specifically targeted at these groups.
• We will attend conferences to further build our networks.
• We will host a series of events in 2025 and 2026 centred around 5 years of Food and You 2 data being published. This could include:
  • arranging a special issue in a journal in which we will co-ordinate articles from academics to source secondary analysis contributions for the journal.
  • Working with universities to run a student project conducting secondary analysis of F&Y2 data with a prize for the winning project.

This campaign will be launched in 2024 to seek ACSS input and get wider academics on board with outputs (special edition issue, presentations, student projects) being delivered in 2026. Based on academic expertise within the team, we feel that this lead in time is needed to produce high quality, impactful products.

Raising our profile

• From 2025, we aim to establish a regular reporting cycle for our official statistic and secondary analysis publications so that reports are published within the same month each year. This will allow us to pre-announce publications earlier and schedule dissemination and promotion activities. The feasibility of this will be assessed at the end of 2024 once table production processes (which have recently been brought in house) have embedded.
• We will raise awareness of F&Y2 and upskill other government analysts on the push-to-web methodology including the benefits, challenges and considerations for other departments looking to use this method. We will utilise existing Government Social Research (GSR) and Government Statistical Service (GSS) to deliver presentations, seminars and blogs.

Refreshing our working group

• Our working group meet monthly where a verbal update on key activities is given by the F&Y2 team. Going forward we will make these meetings more focused and interactive, for example, by setting key topics to discuss that arise from the reports, or upskilling stakeholders on how to interpret the data tables.

Taking a more tailored and consultative approach

• From Wave 7 (reporting in Spring 2024) we will be producing tailored briefings for policy teams outlining the relevant findings of importance for their policy area. This will be done on request, and we will consult with teams to understand what data would be key to include within these briefings.
• We will deliver presentations tailored to individual teams and run interactive workshops with stakeholders to discuss the findings and implications in more detail.
• We will run upskilling sessions to help stakeholders make best use of the data, following the introduction of a new table format and new technical report in Wave 7.

Reducing stakeholder confusion over FSA data sources

• We are reviewing the content of the F&Y2 survey and Consumer Insights Tracker (the Tracker) to minimise unnecessary duplication and increase coordination as recommended in the recent review conducted by the ACSS.
  • By reducing duplication of questions, it should help reduce confusion amongst our internal and external stakeholders as there will only be one internal data source for their area of interest reducing the risk of data from the Tracker being used when F&Y2 data would be more appropriate (e.g., informing policy and strategic decisions). This will also create space to add in new questions to meet the FSA’s emerging evidence requirements.

Increasing collaboration with the communications team 

• We will increase collaboration with our Communications team to increase the use of F&Y2 to inform routine communication campaigns which the FSA run for example, campaigns around food safety at Christmas and during the summer.
• We will work with the Communications team to ensure that F&Y2 is built into the Communications strategic plan and is used to inform campaigns from the outset (where appropriate).

Conducting a stakeholder mapping across government and external audiences

• We will conduct a stakeholder mapping exercise in 2024 to identify appropriate contacts in other government departments and arrange regular meetings to discuss the data, areas of cross over and implications for their policy area.
• We will conduct a similar mapping exercise to identify NGOs/ third sector organisations and industry bodies who work in and publish data in areas of interest to the FSA. We will aim to engage with these organisations, identify appropriate contacts and upskill them on the survey. Once relationships have been built, we will maintain regular contact to keep them up to date with new findings.

Next steps

From April 2024, we will start our activities by producing tailored briefings and delivering presentations to policy teams and cross-government colleagues based on Wave 7 findings. We will re-launch our restructured working group meetings and re-run our stakeholder survey to gather feedback on areas for improvement.

This plan will be reviewed on an annual basis and adapted based on the progress made and changing priorities. We will use multiple methods to monitor success including our annual stakeholder survey, tracking the volume of internal reporting and briefing F&Y2 data is used for and the volume of external reports F&Y2 is cited.

Discussion points for ACSS meeting (27^th February 2024)

1.  Do you think the F&Y2 strategic plan will be effective in terms of increasing academic engagement? Are there additional activities that should be considered?
 

2.  Applicability of the F&Y2 strategic plan to other projects- Do you think that we could use a similar approach to maximise academic engagement with Kitchen Life 2 and the Consumer Insights Tracker?