Bedford council school dinner service set to end - but free meals won't be affected

Bedford borough maintained schools will have to have their own school meals contracts in place by September – but free school meals won’t be impacted, a meeting heard.

Borough schools were informed in January that the current school meal service managed through a council buyback service will cease at the end of this academic year.

That meant they should have a replacement service to start from the 2024/25 academic year.

Chris Morris, the borough council’s chief officer for education, SEND and schools infrastructure, told the Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee (March 11) that the number of schools using the service was decreasing year on year.

“I think it was probably fair to say that the benefits that we previously had seen around economies of scale and going in bulk were diminishing,” he said.

“We informed schools in January that we would be ceasing at the end of this year and we also gave a list of the support that was available to them.

“We’re very confident that each school will have a secured provider in place way before the end of the academic year.

“It won’t impact on a school’s duty to provide school meals for their children.”

Councillor Zara Layne (Labour, Harpur) wondered if the worst case scenario had been planned for.

“You said that there’ll be no kind of implication of children receiving free school meals,” she said.

“[If] for any reason there isn’t a system in place come September, how are those free school meals going to be delivered?”

Mr Morris replied that if a school could find itself in that position then the council would have picked that up “pretty early”.

“If we have any school that currently isn’t taking the right steps, certainly early after Easter I will be on the phone and making sure that they really do realise the seriousness of if they don’t secure something.

“So I’m feeling fairly confident, but we also have plans [in place],” he said.