Meeting with Richmond Council

Bravo Richmond Council for convening the first school meals working party meeting yesterday.  Gathered around the table were heads from Queen's School, St Mary Magdalen's,and Orlean's Infants, parents representing Holy Trinity and Hampton Junior, and AVL Consultancy, the borough's school meals monitoring service.  The group will meet half termly until we have reached our aims which are to:

• Investigate best practice and best value school meals provision at schools in the borough outside the Sodexo contract and within other local authority areas
• Consider which schools are, or are likely to become, able to accommodate a cooked-from-fresh school meals provision
• Consider the best way forward if the School Lunch Grant is discontinued at the end of March 2011
• Set criteria (including the matching of diverse needs, e.g. Halal meat, as appropriate), to form the basis of a tendering specification, for a school meals service that would build upon the recent improvement in provision within the borough and lead to much increased take-up
• Present its findings in a report to be considered by Primary Headteachers’ Forum, at its summer term meeting in 2010, and by LBRuT officers, with the aim of achieving clear consensus for a recommendation to be made to the authority’s Cabinet.
  

There was an excellent 'brainstorming' session on what a new contract would look like.  Site visits are to be scheduled for January and a parent survey is in the pipeline.  We're off to a flying start!