Paul Milsom MI appointed Honorary Catering Adviser to Defence

Leading East Anglian hotelier Paul Milsom has been appointed Honorary Catering Adviser to Defence, a prestigious role providing independent hospitality industry advice to the senior leadership of the UK Armed Forces.

Paul, Chairman and Managing Director of family-owned Milsom Hotels & Restaurants, will bring almost four decades of hospitality experience to the role, advising the Service Chiefs on matters relating to catering and food service across Defence.

The appointment is for an initial three-year term and carries the Honorary role of Major General. As Honorary Catering Adviser to Defence, Paul will provide an independent industry perspective across a wide-ranging brief, including catering standards, training and qualifications, customer expectations, food distribution and storage, legislation, technical developments and the management and delivery of catering contracts.

The role has long held ties with the Master Innholders, with previous hoteliers to be appointed to the role including Conor O'Leary MI and David Morgan-Hewitt MI.

Paul said:

"It is an enormous honour to have been asked to take on this role. Hospitality and catering have been my working life for nearly 40 years and I am very much looking forward to using that experience in a completely different environment.

"The scale and complexity of catering across Defence is quite extraordinary. It is about far more than simply feeding the troops; it encompasses procurement, contracts, training, staffing, logistics, legislation and, importantly, ensuring the people serving in our Armed Forces receive the standard of food and service they deserve.

"I hope I can bring a useful independent perspective from the hospitality industry, and I am looking forward to working with and learning from the many people involved in delivering catering across Defence."

There is also a particularly fitting family connection between Paul's new appointment and the origins of Milsom Hotels & Restaurants.

Paul remarked:

"There is a nice sense of history to the appointment for me personally. My father served in the Army Catering Corps and it was actually while travelling to an Army camp in 1952 that he first saw Le Talbooth when he stopped to have a cup of tea. The then owner told him that it was being put on the market the following day, this spurred him on to persuade his family to buy the property.  Seventy-four years later, for me to be given the opportunity to contribute to Defence catering feels like a rather special continuation of that connection."