Public procurement has played a vital role in the COVID-19 response with over 1 billion items of equipment sourced across the UK. However, procurement has not been subject to rigorous analysis. Ordinarily, contracts must be awarded following an open competion. Exceptionally, UK law permits awards to a single supplier without a competition in cases of extreme urgency to minimise delay in delivery. Awards must still be published and clear justifications provided. Yet, hundreds of thousands of contracts have been awarded without full visibility. Further, contracting authorities face immense ongoing pressure to source quickly; suppliers have not been able to access all opportunities; and others have opportunistically charged high prices or not delivered. This project, led by the world-leading Public Procurement Research Group (PPRG) at the University of Nottingham in strategic partnership with the Department of Health and Social Care and the Open Contracting Partnership, will conduct an urgent investigation into single sourcing during the pandemic. The aim is to develop better organisational planning, ensure legal compliance, achieve value for money, and reduce corruption risks in ongoing procurement during the pandemic. The project also aims to lay the foundation for lasting reform which is responsive to a new global political, economic and social reality. To meet these aims, the project objectives will be to: (1) collect and collate evidence of single sourcing through contract data and stakeholder interviews during a defined period; (2) develop a best-practice "toolkit" for immediate use by contracting authorities and suppliers; and (3) provide a "real-time" comprehensive review of single sourcing, comprising analysis of the evidence and recommendations for policy and legislative reform to inform imminent public inquiries and review exercises.

The proposed study will generate novel understanding of the process by which commuting behaviours influence personal wellbeing over time. There is growing recognition that traditional measures of economic growth (like GDP) do not necessarily imply improving quality of life across the population. In acknowledgement of this, the UK government has committed to improving their understanding of personal 'wellbeing'. In general terms, wellbeing refers to the extent to which people's lives are going well and this can be affected by lifestyle practices that may influence physical or mental health. Given that commuting is a regularly repeated activity for the working population, it has been suggested that certain travel behaviours, such as long commutes or cycling regularly, could worsen or improve an individual's health and wellbeing over time. However, good evidence is lacking to confirm this. The study will make use of the Understanding Society study, a unique data resource that has been tracking the lives of members of 40,000 households since 2009/10. The same participants have been surveyed once every year, making it possible to understand how and why their lives are changing over time. The proposed study will analyse the first six waves of Understanding Society data. The analysis will identify how the commuting behaviours of employed adults have changed over the period and establish whether and how commuting has affected different aspects of their personal wellbeing. The longitudinal data will allow analysis which considers whether effect takes place after cause and whether greater exposure leads to larger effect. These criteria for causation have not been tested previously. For instance the study will examine if individuals with longer commute times suffer from higher stress levels and reduced leisure time and consequently report lower personal wellbeing overall. By comparison, do those that start walking to work feel that their physical health improves and stress levels reduce, and hence report better wellbeing overall? The study will seek to address such questions. The proposed research has been co-designed by a research team from the University of the West of England (UWE) and policy researchers at the Department for Transport (DfT). DfT has identified specific evidence needs relating to commuting and wellbeing. The research team comprises travel behaviour experts and statisticians from UWE, a health economist from Rand Europe (Adam Martin), and Dr Adrian Davis, an expert in the relationship between transport and health. DfT will chair a project steering group and be joined as project partner by Department of Health and What Works Centre for Wellbeing. A stakeholder interest group will also ensure close links with policy and practice over the course of the study, Outputs from the project will include policy briefing notes and policy toolkit, co-produced by the project partners and the team of researchers. This will showcase new evidence on the relationships between commuting and wellbeing and be used in practice to identify policies and interventions to improve wellbeing through 'healthy commuting' across the working population.

Food provided in schools has a major influence on the quality of children's diets and has the potential to reduce inequalities in dietary intake between children according to their social or economic background. The quality of diet in childhood has been shown to impact on future development, educational achievement, health and well-being outcomes, and also influences diet in adulthood, as well as disease risk (e.g. diabetes, heart disease) in later life. There are differences in how schools arrange their food provision and what they serve, between schools and between countries in the UK, and this is not well understood. We propose a UK school food network (GENIUS), considering the food system across the preschool, primary and secondary schools, and including all school food provision, both within and outside the canteen. The aim of this network will be to work towards a more health-promoting food and nutrition system in UK schools. Objectives include the development of a network of academics and non-academics across the UK actively researching and influencing school food, the use of a range of novel research methods to understand the current UK school food system, and appreciate its complexities, and examination of similarities and differences and areas of best practice between the four nations of the UK. Finally, the network will explore opportunities for interventions that will positively impact on school food, improve the diet quality of children at school and reduce inequalities. The network will bring together researchers from a range of backgrounds including nutrition, epidemiology, public health, sensory science, health economics, health informatics, health psychology, education, planning and policy. Inclusion of project partners who are actively involved in the provision of school food from across the UK, including from local government, catering providers, pupils and parents, will make sure the work of the network is immediately useful and, together, this team of academics and non-academics will ensure the-development of research priorities and questions that are relevant in the school setting. This network will use a combination of workshops, working groups and funding of small projects to map the school food system and work together to develop research questions. Understanding the current food system and building this network of those interested in and working in school food will advance research and policy around the food environment in schools. Findings will be presented widely in both the academic and non-academic setting to make sure the findings have an impact. Funding applications will be developed based on the initial co-production of research questions and priority areas during network activities, working in partnership with policy makers and schools, and will sustain the network in the longer term.

The Department of Health (DH) and the NHS are particularly exercised by climate change. Whereas the occupants of other building types might consider raising their comfort temperature thresholds a little in summer and suspend the use of mechanical cooling, NHS patients' well being and safety may well be compromised by higher summer temperatures. In fact the DH and the NHS are hit by a double whammy, the pressure to reduce energy consumption, colliding with the pressure to protect their patients and staff from overheating, the dangers of which were manifest in recent years' summer heatwaves. Innovative low energy design strategies and techniques will be required both for new buildings and, most importantly, for the existing building stock, the 27,701,676 square metres of the NHS Retained Estate. However there are many barriers to the implementation of such innovative interventions in NHS buildings, patient safety being paramount. Worries include the inability to achieve stable temperature control and safe ventilation (the airborne transmission of pathogens is an emerging science as our colleague Dr.Cath Noakes freely admits), the proliferation in the use of medical equipment adding heat to hospital interiors and the mechanics of modern contractual arrangements which place private companies in charge of the Facilities Management of health buildings, which, unsurprisingly, given the penalties they face, are ultra-cautious about adopting change.This project, 'Design and delivery of Robust Hospital Environments in a Changing Climate' (DeDeRHECC), will investigate these conundra to come up with economical and practical low energy refurbishment strategies for existing hospitals. It will derive a closer definition of resilience in the context of an acute hospital and, most particularly, the criteria set for hospital environments for the various categories of space found in hospitals; non-clinical, patient rooms, diagnostic and treatment, even operating theatres. The team is sceptical that these all align into a cherent requirement and will review UK and US criteria. Using four sets of hospital sites drawn from the project's four participating major NHS Trusts, it will 'catalogue' basic hospital building types from this sizeable sample of NHS stock, identify those most frequently occurring, assess their current resilience to climate change and propose appropriate solutions or clusters of interventions for each 'type'. It will model these ideas so that relative energy savings can be quantified and their resilience to warming external temperatures determined. It will cost them. It will calculate the lifetime running costs and energy savings and assess Value for Money. It will also examine the procurement environment in which these innovative solutions need to be delivered, the protocols by which refurbishment projects are designed, approved and implemented. Their delivery will incur risks. The project will take innovative risk assessment tools for change, developed for engineering design, and apply them to these future large and medium scale construction projects. It will develop processes to make the integration of these innovative, low energy interventions into hospital refurbishment projects smoother and more familiar to those who will be delivering them. It will produce guidance and worked examples in text and web form and, most significantly, as a DVD film of participants discussing the challenges, their anxieties, the ideas and how to deliver them. Accompanying animations will communicate the strategies and communications vividly and quickly to very busy people.

Alcohol is enjoyed by many and while it contributes to the economy, it is also a major cause of early death, illness, lost work days, violence, social problems, relationship difficulties and inequalities. Governments can reduce these harms by taking action to make alcohol less affordable (price policy) and less easily available (availability policy), and by reducing how much it is advertised and promoted (marketing policy). Across the four nations of the United Kingdom (UK), and in Republic of Ireland (ROI), there have been many recent changes in these alcohol policies which have been heavily debated by campaign groups and politicians. There is a need for research to understand the intended and unintended effects of policies, not just on health, but on social, economic and cultural aspects. As Scotland introduced several new policies from 2005 onwards, and put in place extensive structures to support studies to explore their effects, a broad community of alcohol policy researchers has been coming together. The Irish government has recently passed a world-leading set of policies to reduce alcohol harms, but currently there are fewer researchers studying these policies in ROI/NI, and little contact between those who are. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also considering further policy changes. Whilst traditionally seen as a medical issue, it is clear that alcohol consumption and harms are affected by culture and politics. This network therefore proposes to bring together researchers from a wide range of social science and other backgrounds, and to draw others into the field, to deliver on the alcohol policy research needed in UK/ROI over the coming years. Our ACTIVITIES will focus on four themes: Availability, Marketing, Price & Politics and will include: 1) A website, blog and twitter feed; 2) A launch event with researchers and policy partners in Dublin; 3) Open seminars on each of the four themes, each hosted by a different university, with side meetings to build teams for future research; 4) Study visits for 4 selected early career researchers to spend time with more experienced colleagues; 5) A workshop to build capacity on alcohol policy research and give time for teams to develop funding applications; and 6) A UK/ROI open research symposium to which any researchers can submit abstracts to present their work, with invited speakers and free places for early career researchers. The network will be led by Prof. Joe Barry in ROI and Prof. Niamh Fitzgerald in the UK. NF is Professor of Alcohol Policy and specialises in studies drawing on expertise across different academic disciplines to better understand intended and unintended consequences of policy interventions. JB has worked in substance use for 30 years and chairs an expert group set up by the Minister for Health in ROI on which 3 academics from this proposal also sit. NF and JB are joined by 14 co-applicants from 13 institutions across the UK, from 10+ disciplines and with cross-cutting interests in the four themes. The bid will benefit from the active involvement of policy partners from government departments in NI, ROI and Scotland; and public health agencies across the UK. It will link into existing policy groups, including the UK/ROI British Irish Council, and the NI/ROI North South Alcohol Policy Advisory Group. The Institute of Public Health in Ireland, an all island body with a remit to inform public policy in both ROI and NI is an active partner and will provide administrative support to the network. We expect that the network will give rise to new research teams involving UK & ROI academics, and new alcohol policy studies focused within or across the four policy themes. With our partners, we will actively plan for the future of the network beyond the funded period.