School meals losing £13,000 a month

School dinners in Powys are losing the education authority more than £13,000 a month due to soaring food and fuel costs, councillors revealed.Already subsidised, the service costs have risen this year. Over the last eight months Powys County Council, the local education authority, has made a loss of £200,000 on the service.

Now members of the council have vowed to tackle the problem. But calls for more schools to have their food brought in rather than running their own kitchens have been dismissed by councillors.

At the latest county council board meeting this week, members heard food prices have gone up “dramatically”.

Rises include pasta, flour and bread by 20 per cent, cooking oil by 40 per cent and fruit and vegetables by 29 per cent, while orange juice, a popular choice in primary schools, has risen by 59 per cent.

Councillor David Jones, board member for schools, said both fuel and food costs had risen in recent months and urgent action would need to be taken.

He said: “However, the most worrying side of this is the costs have not levelled out. They are continuing to increase.

“We have a lot of small school canteens, because we have a lot of small schools. It may be in the future we are going to have to make some difficult decisions about these canteens, although taking meals to schools would then increase fuel costs.”

Councillors have now pledged to find a solution in a bid to cut overheads.

John Evans, council communications manager, said members would be discussing the issue at a board meeting this month.

“There are 103 primary schools in Powys and not all of them have their own kitchens, so we have the rising fuel costs to think about as well,” he said.

“The council has already made some changes in an attempt to improve things with the service. We have revised the menu and reduced the cycle of food selection to every three weeks, rather than every four weeks.”

“We have also introduced a single selling price for school meals,” he said. “We used to charge £1.70 for infants and £1.75 for juniors, but this has been altered to one set price of £1.80.”

By Anwen Evans