A new bakery has been launched inside HMP Northumberland, helping to expand an existing food enterprise run by the Oswin Project.
The new 500 st ft facility will help the charity organisation – which looks to break the reoffending cycle through skills enhancement, support and employment opportunities – triple the number of serving prisoners it has training and working in catering services up to 30. Trainees can obtain Level 2 safety and food hygiene for catering qualifications, with the Oswin Project hoping to introduce a Level 2 bakery course in the future.
The expansion will also allow the Oswin Project’s Baking Out initiative to extend its range of bread, pies, quiches, and cakes, increase capacity to meet growing demand, and enter new markets such as external catering. Its current wholesale offering features 25 different pie varieties in two sizes and a dozen types of bread including stotties. These are sold at Café 16 locations at HMP Northumberland and Newcastle Cathedral, as well as in the prison-based farm shop and local retail outlets such as Lesbury Community Shop, The Alnwick Garden, and Foxton Golf Club.
The new bakery has been created via a joint venture between the Oswin Project and prison operator Sodexo, with over £100k in funding received from Scottish Power, The Community Foundation, St Hilda’s Trust, The Convey Trust and the O’Flaherty Foundation. This was spent on converting a kitchen space in HMP Northumberland – a Category C men’s prison – buying second-hand bakery equipment, and covering a year of staff salaries.
Project coordinator James Stoddart revealed that Greggs “very generously donated a large number of catering fridges and freezers”, while the majority of purchased machinery came from equipment distributor Hymas & Hymas in Bishop Auckland – this included a six-grid Rational combi oven, a Falcon Dominator flat-top burner and oven, a Rollfix pastry sheeter, and a medium Champion pie press with a custom die set.
The enterprise also bought a Contender 15L Planetary Mixer and a KRD commercial dough proofer, whilst continuing to use a three-deck oven acquired six years ago and a pie press dubbed ‘Little Champ’.
Oswin Project CEO Fiona Sample, who founded the charity in 2014, expressed how through giving prisoners the opportunity to work and learn, underpinned by mentoring, they are putting “a wedge in the revolving door of reoffending”. Currently 80% of prisoners are on return trips to prison, she noted, adding that the Oswin Project reoffending rate is just 3% against the national average of 38%.
“Why successive Government’s persist in thinking that building more prison places is the answer is baffling. It is an incredibly expensive and ineffective option,” she said. “At Baking Out in partnership with HMP Northumberland we aim to change this – one loaf, one pie, one tray bake at a time.”
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