Freeman Philip Shelley has been named as one of the Most Influential people in public sector foodservice. Every year the multi-media platform, Public Sector Catering, brings together a group of experienced industry leaders and asks them to name the people they believe are the key influencers.
The final twenty people on The Most Influential List have been invited to the House of Commons on 29th Jan 2026 to air their views on key industry issues at a roundtable discussion that determines the next year’s key action points for the Public Sector Catering Alliance.
Earlier this year, Phil won The Lifetime Achievement Award for his service to the hospital catering industry at the 2025 Public Sector Catering Awards, in recognition of his work with the NHS.
Currently Phil is a senior operational & policy manager at NHS England and its national lead for Net Zero Food. He is a past chair of the Hospital Caterers Association (HCA) and was asked by the Government in 2019 to chair the Hospital Food Review that laid out the eight National Standards of Hospital Food for patients, staff and visitors. He later joined NHS England to help trusts implement the recommendations of the review. Since then, he has been involved in setting up the NHS Chef Competition in England, the NHS Chefs Academy, and has also championed the cause of improving food for children in hospital, along with their parents and carers.
Brad Pearce, Chair of the Lead Association for Caterers in Education (LACA), was also on The Most Influential List. LACA – recently rebranded as The School Food People – is an organisation that The Cooks Company supports as part of our Assistance of Cookery programme. It represents 550 catering managers who are responsible for 110,000 staff across 27,000 schools in England, Scotland, and Wales. Together they deliver 3m lunches to the nation’s schoolchildren every term-time day.
With thanks to Public Sector Catering, who provide a valuable resource for decision makers in the UK’s foodservice community, via their monthly magazine and website www.publicsectorcatering.co.uk
