LACA urges caution on school lunch grant

Sandra Russell, national chairman of the Local Authority Caterers' Association (LACA) says: "As the ring-fencing status of the SLG has only just been removed, it is too early to speculate about the possible outcomes of the decision. "The impact of the loss of ring-fencing status, coupled with the local government response to the economic situation nationally, has yet to be assessed and early conjecture about overall school meal price rises at this stage is both unwise and unhelpful. "LACA will continue to work with schools and local authorities to emphasise the importance of school meals to the development of young people and how it should form part of the whole school approach to their education - if we are nationally to tackle the obesity crisis and decrease NHS costs in the longer term. "Considerable efforts should be made to encourage head teachers and school governing bodies to channel the School Lunch Grant towards supporting the provision of school meals, as originally designated. "We should also bear in mind that the cost of delivering school meal s rvices will vary, dependent upon a number of factors - including the number of pupils/students on individual school rolls, the urban or rural location of schools and demographic issues such as the number of free schools meals, etc. "In some cases, delegated funding – including the School Lunch Grant - may not (together with income from paid meals) cover all the costs of individual school sites; as a result this could lead to price increases on a local or area/geographic basis." Over the next three months LACA plans to collect feedback from members to assess the status of the school meals service generally together with the impact on the price of meals. Adds Russell: "It is important to advocate to parents that school meals still continue to represent very good value for money, particularly when weighed against their nutritional and educational benefits for children and young people". She said that when the Coalition Government announced the SLG was to be continued beyond March 2011, it was made clear the funding would not be ring-fenced. "The potential loss of the School Lunch Grant's 'ring-fencing' status had already been anticipated."