Advisory Committee Appointment for Steve Garrett of Riverside

Putting the consumer first is one of the FSA’s core values, and the new committee will provide the Agency’s Board with quality assurance of its interaction with consumers. The committee will review and assess the engagement work that the Agency carries out with consumers. The 8 committee members, and Chair Philip Cullum, are all senior figures in their current fields and between them offer specialised knowledge in the areas of consumer perspective, analysis of consumer data, performance measurement and marketing innovation.

The ACCE will report annually to the FSA Board. In addition to reporting on the effectiveness of the Agency’s consumer engagement, it will make recommendations on how the engagement process might be strengthened.

Food Standards Agency Chair, Dame Deirdre Hutton said: “We are committed to putting the consumer at the heart of what we do. This new advisory committee will provide an independent audit of our performance in all of our interaction with consumers. Effective engagement with consumers is essential and I look forward to the impact the committee will have in this important area.”

Steve Garrett commented: “I think this Committee is an important move by the FSA as it recognises the importance of listening to, and communicating effectively with, all sectors of the community to identify the main obstacles to eating a healthy diet in this country, and how they can be addressed. I’m really pleased to be a part of it and hope that my years of experience of working at a community level with local food issues in South Riverside will help to make a useful contribution.”

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Background:

• Steve Garrett lives and works in South Riverside, a culturally diverse inner-city neighbourhood of Cardiff. As founder and Chair of the Riverside Community Market Association (RCMA) and a Director of RCMA Social Enterprise Ltd., he has steered the Riverside Market through it's nine years of growth and development, including various spin-off activities such as: setting up the Roath Real Food Market; organising RCMA's schools outreach programme; writing the RCMA Urban Farmers' Market Toolkit; and (currently) establishing the South Cardiff Food and Health Network and the RCMA Market Garden - an intensive horticulture enterprise close to Cardiff. Steve is a Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs award winner, and recently supported a group of local women in setting up the Riverside Community Food Coop. He was a founder member of Farmers Markets in Wales, sits on the Welsh Assembly’s Agrifood Partnership Forum, the Cardiff Food and Health Strategy Group, and is a Panel member of the U.K. Sustainable Development Commission.

• Philip Cullum is Acting Chief Executive of the National Consumer Council. He is a member of the Government's Risk and Regulation Advisory Council and is the first chair of the Food Standards Agency’s new Advisory Committee on Consumer Engagement. Personal policy interests include customer service, regulation and public services, and his publications include 'The stupid company: how British businesses throw away money by alienating consumers’ and ‘Better regulation: the consumer contribution'.
Before joining the NCC, Philip was Executive Director at Opinion Leader Research, where his clients included Vodafone, the Home Office and the union Community. Prior to that he was an Associate Partner at Accenture, responsible for creating new thinking aimed at top CEOs and policymakers. Philip has also worked at Which? where he was Head of Policy. He has been a Board Member of a leading housing association and Chair of a not-for-profit organisation providing mental health services, and he currently advises a leading autism education charity on its communications strategy.