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| UPDATED
EVERY FRIDAY
Last Update:
Friday 20th
May, 2005 |
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| All
content © New Journal Enterprises, 2005. |
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| More cash for school dinners |
MORE money should
be spent on school meals from next year, council officials
have said.
A year-long review of Camden’s school meals service
recommends dipping into council reserves to spend an extra
15p per meal from September.
Under plans set to be discussed at a meeting of the council’s
Overview and Scrutiny Commission on Tuesday, spending per
meal will increase further from the current £1.50 to
£1.70 in September 2006, with an increase in the amount
spent on ingredients from 45p to up to 70p coming in at the
same stage.
The proposals leave the door open for catering giant Scolarest,
which has been under fire since winning the contract to supply
Camden schools in 2003, to carry on serving dinners when a
new contract is awarded next year.
Town Hall officials say there has been “significant
dissatisfaction with the quality and overall performance over
the last two years” but have ruled out taking over the
service themselves, arguing that it is too big a job to complete
by April – a move criticised by campaigning parents.
St Paul’s School parent Natasha Seery, a leading Camden
campaigner, said: “I understand why Camden doesn’t
want to run all the kitchens but it would be better encouraging
small groups of schools to get together in consortiums so
that they can spread the cost and risk but take real control.”
Speaking to the New Journal in March, TV chef Jamie Oliver
also called on Camden to take back control of its kitchens
when he said: “Council-led services are better and in
an ideal world private firms shouldn’t be allowed to
feed our kids like animals, but in the real world we are stuck
with them.”
But Scolarest managers have long argued that they struggle
to live up to parents’ expectations because they are
paid too little, with managing director Tony Sanders accusing
parents of “wanting a Rolls-Royce service for the price
of a Mini”.
The firm positioned itself to win the new contract earlier
this year by increasing the amount it spends on ingredients
and bringing in a new chef at St Paul’s, where children
and parents had been particularly outspoken.
Council officials say the service there and at a handful of
other schools has made a “strong improvement”,
and have also extracted an agreement from Scolarest to pay
an extra 5p per meal from September for fresh ingredients
across Camden.
Whoever wins the new contract should “move towards”
using organic and locally-sourced produce, the report says,
with 76 per cent of head teachers and 89 per cent of parents
who responded to a survey saying they would pay extra for
the chance to eat “sustainable food”. |
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