Primary schools across Perth and Kinross are to be given frozen meals. The scheme is being introduced as Perth and Kinross Council looks to make £200k of savings through a review of catering services.
Tayside Contracts’ Tay Cuisine kitchen in Dundee will produce the fresh meals, using local ingredients where possible. They will be frozen immediately to preserve nutritional value and ensure food safety. The cooking process will then be completed in local kitchens to bring the meals up to the correct serving temperature.
The proposals, made jointly with Angus and Dundee City Councils, have come about due to several key drivers:
- All three councils are working to meet the Scottish Government's policy to expand early years provision by August 2020 which includes the need to provide meals for these children. It is estimated that this will increase demand by an additional 1.2 million meals per year across Tayside. Demand which cannot be met by the current provision.
- More and more children and young people have special dietary requirements which potentially means there are nearly 200k special diet meals required per annum (based on estimated current figures). Some special diet meals can be extremely complex and challenging to make in individual production kitchens. By centralising the preparation of these meals, a dedicated kitchen area will be created to produce these special diet meals.
- Advances in food science over recent years now mean that frozen fresh meals are equal in quality to freshly cooked meals and freezing also enhances food safety.
- All three councils are looking to maximise efficiency and cost effectiveness as they address significant budget challenges. Centralising production is more cost effective. The cost saving will be £1.1m against capital investment costs of £100k from each council plus an investment of £1.9m by Tayside Contracts, resulting in payback in just two years.
- All of the above indicates that the current service delivery model is no longer fit for purpose and requires a different approach. The significant capital outlay that would be required for new premises, equipment and infrastructure across the current kitchens to meet the increased demand is significantly reduced by creating one production facility.
Evidence from Glasgow City Council, which recently moved to cook-freeze production and Clackmannanshire Council, which adopted this model some time ago, showed that there is no drop-off in meal numbers if communication with stakeholders was done effectively.
This will include 'tasting sessions' and information programmes that promote the quality of the cook-freeze meal service and this will also be an opportunity to increase the percentage of young people using the meals service as well as gain the confidence of adult users and organisations.
Perth and Kinross Council's Lifelong Learning Convener, Councillor Caroline Shiers commented, 'The central kitchen proposal would allow us, together with our neighbours in Dundee and Angus, to continue to deliver a high-quality, flexible meal service, whilst meeting the expected rise in demand for school meals as a result of the national expansion of early learning and childcare. It would achieve all of this whilst also making significant savings at a time when local authorities are faced with challenges as we seek to set our budgets.'
Angus Council's convener of Children and Learning, Councillor Derek Wann said, 'These proposals are an innovative and cost effective approach to providing highly nutritional meals, using local ingredients where possible, that meet the increasing demand, particularly for our early years provision.
Stewart Hunter, convener of Dundee City Council's children and families committee, said, ''If it is delivered effectively then the evidence from other areas where this system is used is that just as many pupils and service users take the meals as before the change. Tayside Contracts plan to run tasting sessions and information programmes that demonstrate that a cook-freeze meal service will continue to deliver the tasty and nutritional meals customers currently enjoy.'
